I found the book to be a bit slow. The writing is beautiful, much like everything else Primo Levi has written, but I just couldn't connect with the characters. ( )

Stories told to an unnamed narrator by a rigger while they are both stuck working in the Soviet Union. They didn't really grip me. The narrator's story of how he found out what was wrong with the anchovy can enamel (the last story in the book) was actually the most interesting. Machinery just doesn't interest me all that much, but then nor does chemistry yet the chemist's story had a puzzle I could empathise with and feel good when the solution came. Most of the rigger's stories I just felt 'so what?' at the end. ( )

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These are stories of the life of work, whether as an itinerant rigger or as a synthetic chemist; they are tales of the consuming force of construction, told by and to a pair of men, and the stories are sometimes set against a hypothetical counter-force of (often destructive) women, as if women's conundrums of building related only to relationships, to the web of knitting they are often seen doing rather than to the towers and bridges constructed by men. ( )

Primo Levi, what a hero! The only scientist I know to have truly conquered the literary world. Here we have Tales from the Workface. The reminiscences of Faussone, a rigger in a world where work means getting your hands dirty and making something; standing back at the end of a day to pass your hand across your forehead and surveying the fruits of your labour. This book should be covered in grime, pages curling on the dashboard of a JCB, it should be wallowing in a pool of oil. Here's how to get things done and win the struggle against ill-fortune, fatigue, futility and failure. ( )