Can You Hear Me?

In 1978 the Northern Italian city of Ponte is deteriorating. Once a busier area, the local factory has closed down, leaving many residents scrambling to find new jobs or down and out on their luck. Elia Furenti’s father, Ettore, is one of those who lost his job. The loss of his job impacts not only his family and their wellbeing, but also his mental state. Ettore is constantly in a volatile mood and has recently started not sleeping. Elia is growing scared of his father’s moods and cannot understand why his mother continues to stand by him.

The murder of a local boy rocks the town of Ponte to its core and soon Elia is questioning his father’s whereabouts at that time. Unable to take his concerns to his mother, Elia looks for show more friendship in a local boy and his mother, Anna. Former Ponte resident, Anna quickly becomes more than just a motherly figure to sixteen year old Elia and soon their relationship pulls him towards adulthood. Now that a girl from town has gone missing, Elia’s suspicions are even higher against his father. Can he balance the life he has at home and his relationship with Anna or will his world spiral out of control just like the town around him?

Elena Varvello’s CAN YOU HEAR ME? is the coming of age story for Elia Furenti in the summer of 1978. This novel is an intriguing piece of literary fiction with an underlying mystery that fuels the actions Elia will take during the course of the summer. Varvello writes in a manner that truly brings an atmospheric quality to the book and transports the reader straight in to Elia’s rundown hometown of Ponte. You can feel the destruction that the closing of the local factory has caused in this town, not only through the deterioration of Ettore, but also the deterioration of the town and the resident’s quality of living. While I enjoyed the weaving of the chapters, with switches between the abduction of the girl and Elia’s summer unfolding, I was left wanting more from the mystery. I wanted inside of Ettore’s head more, which perhaps is a tall order to request when the story is being told with more of a focus on Elia. I think that this book would have been a quicker and higher rated read for me had I really understood what happened in Ettore’s mind to set him off and more time spent focused on the abduction of the girl and murder of the local boy. For those looking to pick this one up, I would caution that this is a slower read and absolutely more of a literary fiction genre book than a mystery or thriller.

A special thank you to Quercus USA for sending me a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. show less

I sometimes feel I am missing something. Other people love a book, people whose opinions I respect and often share, but I just don’t get it. I feel a bit like this with Can You Hear Me? It is marketed as both suspense and coming-of-age. It is a coming-of-age story, but I am struggling to find any suspense.

The narrator, 16-year-old Elia, begins by telling you the climax of the story. His father is having some kind of mental crisis. Elia suspects he was involved in the disappearance of a boy and he will go on to take the teenage babysitter from next door into the woods.

Of course many great books employ this technique and yet still manage to pique your curiosity because you want to know how they get there, books as diverse as Rebecca by show more Daphne du Maurier or Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. However here, I didn’t feel that there was any interest or anything to feel curious about, because there is no struggle or conflict, no sense that anyone is trying to influence events.

Elia drifts through the summer, doing coming-of-age stuff, hanging out with a kid his parents disapprove of, challenging him to dares, getting the hots for his mate’s mum, and meanwhile his father is disintegrating. Elia signals his unease by putting a picture of the missing boy on his wall and saying inarticulate teenage boy things to his mum along the lines of, what about that boy, though?

The characters speak in abstractions so you know that they’re deep, such as when Elia’s mother says to him, ‘I’ve thought about some things, you know? I don’t know why they felt so important. They don’t matter at all now. You have your life to live.’ And so it goes on to the inevitable.

There’s a sense of overwhelming passivity about it, there’s no suspense because the characters don’t do anything or even look remotely as if they might. It’s very moody and atmospheric but you feel like you want to puncture it, like ask them why no one thought to contact the police or a mental health professional. Elia’s mum works in a library, she could have looked it up.

If it weren’t for the fact that it came highly recommended, I wouldn’t have finished it.
*
I received a copy of Can You Hear Me? from the publisher via Netgalley.
This review first appeared on my blog https://katevane.wordpress.com/ show less

Elia Furenti is sixteen and living in small Italian village with his mother and father, it is 1978. His father has lost his job and started to behave strangely, his mother pretends not to notice and a young boy disappears in the area. By the height of the summer life in the village is hot and tense, then Anna returns with her son. Elia becomes friends with the son but falls heavily for Anna, a woman over twice his age. Then a young girl disappears and Elia is sure he knows what has gone on.

This is a short and tense book. I didn't particularly get engrossed in the story which affected my enjoyment but I can see why many readers really love this tale. There is a sense of tension in the spare writing which adds to a sense of menace but show more ultimately it was not enough for me. show less

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I'm reviewing Can You Hear Me?: The viciously gripping page-turner of summer 2017. This is written by Elena Varvello, and translated from Italian by Alex Valente. Here are my thoughts:

^^ Set in the late 1970s, this is a chilling account of a father struggling to cope with not only the loss of his job, but with his own mental illness and how it affects the lives of others.

^^ To be honest, I didn't think it was as "gripping" as it had promised. I definitely read it fast, and in one sitting, so there wasn't anything wrong with it as such, but I f
eel like I expected more. Maybe I've just read so many fast-paced psychological thrillers lately, I was taken back show more with the slow and steady unfolding of this story. I do sometimes think a large part of enjoying a book depends on a lot of personal internal/external circumstances and not just whether an author can write well.

^^ Saying that, I did enjoy the twist, and always welcome books talking openly about mental illness, as it's a subject that has only too often been brushed under the carpet, and is now being talked about much more openly.

Overall: "Can You Hear Me?" is an intense, dark read, covering not only murder, but the devastating effect on a family coping with mental illness. show less

Can You Hear Me? was creepy and unsettling but never prurient despite tackling teenage sexual experience, mental illness, and murder. The characters didn't draw me in but the book was well done.

4*