A rare novel that can actually make us happier — more precisely, notice the happiness in our own lives.
Daily impressions of life seem to have accidentally formed into a diary. Fleeting and disappearing, like a drawing on glass — breathed, painted, disappeared. But this transience is their beauty.
Walking the streets of Rome, the hero Piccolo notices how nice it is to spend a short vacation in an empty city, suddenly see it in a new way and dive into a fleeting romance with the same as you left. It’s great to hide from the sudden summer rain under the portico and talk to the person who is standing next to you. Or, together with everyone, frantically clap after the end of a boring performance: thank you, thank you, that’s all! Or go to visit and give a bottle of rare wine, and a year later find that she came back to you in a roundabout way.
It is rare to find a book that does not tell about happiness, but simply makes us happier.
Piccolo immerses you in the atmosphere of recognizable daily trifles and everyday situations — so that on every page you say to yourself: but this is definitely about me! There is no plot here, however, the past of the hero, and his current life, and — importantly — the life of his beloved Rome, which is also the lyrical hero of this story, are formed from the mosaic of momentary impressions. And it seems that these sketches can be prescribed as a medicine. For example, those who have a bad mood, longing and headache for a change in the weather.
Translated from Italian by Evgeny Solonovich.
The Body, 224 c.