Lost Words
Description
Winner of the Viareggio Prize, a vivid portrait of Italy on the brink of social upheaval in the 1970s.
Inside an apartment building on the outskirts of Milan, the working-class residents gossip, quarrel, and conspire against each other. Viewed through the eyes of Chino, an impressionable thirteen-year-old boy whose mother is the doorwoman of the building, the world contained within these walls is tiny, hypocritical, and mean-spirited: a constant struggle. Chino finds escape in reading.One day, a new resident, Amelia Lynd, moves in and quickly becomes an unlikely companion and a formative influence on Chino. Ms. Lynd—an elderly, erudite British woman—comes to nurture his taste in literature, introduces him to the life of the mind, and offers a counterpoint to the only version of reality that he’s known. On one level, Lost Words is an engrossing coming-of-age tale set in the seventies, when Italy was going through tumultuous social changes, and on another, it is a powerful meditation on language, literature, and culture.
Reviews
"Gardini's language is forceful and refined." — Silvia Mazzocchi, La Repubblica
"A combative novel, a multilayered piece of fiction, a triumphant narrative mechanism." — Matteo Giancotti, Corriere Della Sera
"A gentle, bittersweet, tragicomic rite-of-passage novel translated into lively English by Moore." — Kirkus Reviews
"Combining elements of comedy and tragedy, Gardini’s novel is a call on today’s Italy to know its own language, to speak with substance, and to reconsider the relationship between words and meaning—a relationship broken by mass culture. As Leopardi declares, there is in words an exhortation to probe the depths of truth—a calling to believe that culture and education can still save us." — from the citation for the Viareggio Prize
