Niccolò Ammaniti, 2001 (translated to English 2003) Date Read: 10/3/22
Summary: (Skip to next paragraph to avoid spoilers). Four families live in a very small town isolated from everyone else. The children have a complicated dynamic, with one child, Skull, being the leader. He forces Michele to investigate an abandoned house. Through a series of unfortunate events, Michele learns that a boy his age is being kept prisoner in a small hole behind this house. It turns out, the boy has been kidnapped by the men of the village and is being held for ransom. Michele becomes friends with the boy and tries to help him escape. In the process of this, Michele's own father accidentally shoots Michele, mistaking him for the boy they've kidnapped, and who has become a liability.
This novel is a combination of two Stephen King movies. It starts like Stand By Me and ends like The Mist. I found it hard to read at times. There is a shocking amount of casual brutality and child abuse, even from loving parents. Michele is beaten by his mother and father, threatened with abandonment and death, kicked out of the house at one point, and witnesses his mother almost be raped.
I can understand the desperation that would lead otherwise loving parents to kidnap someone else's child and hold him to ransom. I can get that. I don't agree with it, obviously, but it is understandable. I cannot understand the way these people treated their own children. Misery and poverty are one thing but this was a lot.
Length: 200 pages in hardback
ReReadability: no it was depressing af
Classic: it is extremely well written and definitely sucks you in. I've not read any other Italian literature to compare it to, but I think it does qualify as a "Modern Classic", if that oxymoron can be used
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