A review by tommooney
The Day Before Happiness, by Erri De Luca
3.0
THE DAY BEFORE HAPPINESS by Erri De Luca. This short novel by one of Italian literature's big names is full of historical intruige but some of the language is strange in translation.
A young orphan boy comes of age in Naples. He plays football in the street, longs after a girl on a third floor balcony, reads books he borrows from a secondhand store. He is befriended by the building porter, himself an old orphan, who tells of the Neapolitan uprising that helped drive the Nazis out of the city during the war. He also acts as a guide, a guru almost, to the boy in all matters of love and life.
It is all very lovely. My only hangup is that some of the language, particularly the dialogue, is very melodramatic, enigmatic almost. This is not the sharp talk of the lower classes. Or do the poor in Italy talk like characters from Dawson's Creek? Who knows. Anyway, it's a decent book.
A young orphan boy comes of age in Naples. He plays football in the street, longs after a girl on a third floor balcony, reads books he borrows from a secondhand store. He is befriended by the building porter, himself an old orphan, who tells of the Neapolitan uprising that helped drive the Nazis out of the city during the war. He also acts as a guide, a guru almost, to the boy in all matters of love and life.
It is all very lovely. My only hangup is that some of the language, particularly the dialogue, is very melodramatic, enigmatic almost. This is not the sharp talk of the lower classes. Or do the poor in Italy talk like characters from Dawson's Creek? Who knows. Anyway, it's a decent book.