SUSANNA TAMARO d Aquino, Niccolo
Europe (Washington, D.C.),
04/1995
345
Journal Article
If 1994 was for Italy the year of Silvio Berlusconi in politics, wrote the venerable daily newspaper Corriero della Sera, then it was the year of Susanna Tamaro in literature.
Rispondimi Zaleski, Jeff
Publishers Weekly,
02/2002, Letnik:
249, Številka:
5
Book Review
In this provocative collection of three novellas set in modern-day Italy, SUSANNA TAMARO (Follow Your Heart) skillfully explores themes of religion, depression, jealousy, violence and isolation. ...Using starkly wrought first-person narratives, the Umbria-based author establishes taut story lines punctuated with bold, provocative statements.
Next month Nan A. Talese/Doubleday will publish "Follow Your Heart," a novel by Susanna Tamaro. The novel has become the third-best-selling book in Italy since 1945.
In addition to Michael Frayn's ability to write like an angel, we ought to pay homage to his talent for seeing into the future. The Tin Men marked Frayn's debut in 1965, but reads like a novella ...whose time has just come. A scabrously funny satire on media conglomerations and blue-chip conspiracies, the book investigates the activities of the William Morris Institute of Automation Research, an organisation engaged in the computerisation of predictable, repetitive human tasks such as praying and composing newspaper reports. For this it receives funding from Rothermere Vulgurian's deeply unethical Amalgamated Television empire. Of particular note is Frayn's visualisation of absurdly top-heavy administrative structures, stuffed with "programme controllers, coordinating producers, visualisation directors and programme coordination visualisers". It's as if Birtism was never about to happen. AH In Tim Lott's involving morality tale of the Thatcher years, rampant individuality spins the wheel of fortune. As he moves from Fulham council flat to gleaming Milton Keynes, Charlie the printer, with his unexamined certainties and job for life, loses work, home and all; while his meek wife Maureen emerges as a diamond book-keeper, unexpected adulteress and beady entrepreneur. Lott edges through the silt of the 80s with particular reference to soft furnishings, every inch of PVC a telltale social indicator. There's a strong whiff of Mike Leigh here: both in the brimming compassion for households where the air is humid with things unsaid, and in the way cultural change leaves Lott slightly bothered and surly. Through the cautionary set-pieces and incidental pleasures, Lott sustains the pulse of Maureen and Charlie's story, even if he can't decide whether they're pushing their own destiny or puppets of the new economy.
