The extraordinary fresco of a rich and empty world
"News grinds everything, just don't stand still and you forget everything online"
The news grinds everything, fortunately and unfortunately and has grinded so much that there is nothing left. Just a big hole. A huge void in which puppet-men move. Bulimics of goals to be achieved, of successes and of money. The warm and oppressive atmosphere of good Rome, that stench of nothing and everything that hovers casually among the villas of the upper class, the tiredness, the breathlessness and the indolence of parliamentarians, journalists, financiers, small and large men of power that make up the Italian bourgeoisie, the great absentee of the moment.
Now, we have the whole Italian ruling class in black and white, masterfully and mercilessly gutted by Marco Ferrante, in his latest searing and sarcastic Gin tonic with closed eyes.
Who are the protagonists of the novel?
At the center of the plot is the rich Misiano family, which retains all the characteristic features of bourgeois families Romance on the edge of today's precipice, the one in which contemporary society flounders. A family made up of three brothers: the tax consultant Gianni, the deputy Paolo and the journalist Ranieri. Three brothers very different from each other and in non-idyllic relationships. A father, Edoardo, interested above all in banks and high-powered cars. A mother, Elsa, the real head of the family.
Gin tonic with eyes closed: a memorable fresco of an empty world
A whole galaxy of wives and lovers, politicians and entrepreneurs, parties and family reunions orbits around the Misiano family. Marital betrayals and arrests, scandals and scandals. Polite hypocrisy and ferocious gossip. A IT world; desperately empty, beneath its golden surface. And, of this "empty world", Gin tonic with closed eyes it is a memorable fresco.
But the tone is never one of moralistic condemnation: from every page, even the most lashing, the author's very human and smiling understanding for the weaknesses of his characters blows.
And the ending will be unexpectedly romantic.
Gin tonic with eyes closed is one of best Italian novels of the year signed by Marco Ferrante, deputy director of La7, long-time journalist and refined writer.
http://www.giunti.it/libri/narrativa/gin-tonic-a-occhi-chiusi/
