Translated material
Strange families
Sam is the most ordinary London schoolboy; skateboards and dreams of becoming a designer. The only strange thing in his life is his own mother, whom high school students mistake for a pretty older sister and strive to ask for her phone number, since the difference between them is some fifteen and a half years. Unfortunately, Sam also discovers that he will soon become a father. The first girl he was lucky enough to sleep with gets pregnant and flatly refuses to take action. In a word, early children are the curse of the family. By the middle of the book, the hero finds himself with a baby in his arms, and there are still many pages and final exams ahead. And in fact, the whole novel is about what unpleasant surprises life can throw at you if you don’t take care of the future and don’t use condoms.
On the cover of Nick Hornby's latest edition there is an advertising slogan: Britain's number one writer. So don't believe him. Hornby had a chance to break into the top five in the mid-90s; then his best novels were published - “Football Fever” and Hi-Fi - about the love of football, music and other optional things that make a person happy. And then something clicked in the writer’s head, and he began to write very sentimental and correct stories that affirm family values and an extremely optimistic view of the world.
You can’t say about the novel “Slam” that it is bad or weak. On the contrary, the story of two positive teenagers who took responsibility for someone else's life is written vividly and even truthfully. The main character, having learned about a possible pregnancy, does not rush to his beloved with the words: “I’ve been waiting for this,” but, out of fear, runs away to some stinking town and returns only because there is not enough money in the piggy bank. In general, there are many funny episodes in the book, since we are not talking about a romantic couple at all. The characters are not married, live separately, don’t even think about sex after that very time, and each strives to catch a runny nose in order to push parental responsibilities onto the other. In addition, Sam discovers a virtual friend who periodically throws him into the near future. So, when it becomes completely unbearable from a child’s crying, you can run a few moves ahead and make sure that everything will end well. This is such a nice formal find. And it is useful for the reader to know that early children are not a problem at all. You have your whole life ahead, so you can do everything: make a career, find a normal partner, and raise a child. But when you are thirty and he is fourteen, you can drink beer together and discuss the girls passing by.
At the end of the book, I don’t understand why, a report from the UK Ministry of Health about an increase in pregnancy rates among teenagers is suddenly mentioned. So from the novel “Slam” one gets the impression that it was written by order of this very ministry. Everything here somehow works out very well: grandparents, diapers, nurseries, separate rooms, courses for little mothers - get pregnant and reproduce, just don’t think about abortion. That is, if we discard all the anecdotes and lyrical digressions, then the result is a pleasant and neat moral. For extracurricular reading in high school, it might be okay, but honestly, it’s not number one at all.
Luigi Malerba . Roman ghosts. Translation from Italian by F. Dvin. M., “Foreigner”.
Luigi Malerba is revered in Italy as a living classic; Over the course of his half-century literary career, he managed to prove himself both as a screenwriter and as an author of good historical novels. His new novel captivates not with its scale, but with the grace of its execution. We are talking about a chamber family history, where the narrative is divided into two voices - husband and wife. Clarissa talks first, then it’s Jano’s turn, then alternately. Each person presents their own interpretation of the same events, so that the reader comes up with alternative versions of the same marriage. At first it seems that we are talking about banal family troubles: we have been together for many years, the passion has gone, we have not given birth to children, but we have had lovers. Each of the heroes admits to treason reluctantly, glancing cautiously in the direction of their partner to see if he will hear. Already for this cautious intonation, Signor Malherbe was awarded a hundred bonus points.
But the real intrigue of this ingenious plot is revealed much later. Intuitively guessing that his wife’s real life is far from taking the first place, Jano begins to write a novel in which he portrays himself and her as the main characters. By leaving the manuscript in the right place, he provokes his wife to read the first chapter of the story. Having begun to read, Clarissa completely falls into the power of the events described on paper. Mistaking what is written for disguised diary notes, she replaces real events with imaginary ones and gradually becomes the hero of her husband’s novel, a puppet who moves through life along a given trajectory and plays the role assigned to her by the author. The ending to this brilliant and subtle story is a little disappointing, but that's often the case with so-called "novels within a novel" - it's very difficult to complete both plots adequately.