The Break

A solid literary performance from Pietro Grossi. More style than substance, Grossi's short novel The Break is written in a taut, simple prose that makes it very quick and easy to read. The book breathes well. That said, it was hard to piece together what the point of the story was. The characters are sometimes too lightly drawn and there is a bit of pomposity to the endeavour. Grossi weights everything with metaphor and literary meaning, with everything from the confusing billiards game to road-laying and cooking eggs being analogous to some wider principle of life. Sometimes it feels as though the book isn't deep enough to take the strain.

Even so, the literary performance stays on the side of agreeableness, and the reader can dig out show more a message by the end: take life as it comes, because you can never gauge with precision where things will fall. Bear in mind it is the reader who has to do the digging, and this won't be satisfactory to many. The book only makes sense after you have read it (the final scene is key), which can make it a frustrating read, but the book's so short and earnest that it's not a futile one. show less

Sparse and gentle, a short tale of Italian Billiards, inertia, poverty and the prisons we make ourselves.

Dino follows in his fathers footsteps as a stone layer, a repetitive task that makes him ask "How many stones do you think it takes to make a person? " he obsessively plays Italian Billiards and talks dreamily with his wife about packing up and leaving to seek adventure. Of course things are about to change, social unrest and redundancy being only 2.

It could be seen to be too sparse for some, and sometimes a bit formulaic (that ending!) but I found it a quiet and at heart charming book, the fragility and ennui of every day life, our self centred blindness. Characters are carefully constructed brush strokes, just enough there to show more paint the tale and somehow this fits and is in no way frustrating. They mimic the large dramatic events in Dino's life, rendered background against the small intense moments of life. It's the size that ensures none of this gets tiresome 220 pages of an understated, packed life story.

“I can’t do it. I can’t spend every day in that black shit. It was different before. Before, everything seemed the way it ought to be. Before, I didn’t ask myself any questions"

Recommended to lovers of understated novellas and fans of Italian tales. show less

In a small town where little perceptably changes, lives continue along their expected tracks. But Dino's wife becomes pregnant and he loses his job, as well as pressures from outside the community influencing their lives. Dino must re-evaluate his life, but the biggest shock is yet to come.

Told in spare prose, but with a lightness of heart which keeps the book from feeling bleak, our gentle observation of the characters changes them in profound ways, as they draw on hitherto unexpected inner strengths in dealing with these changes.

Niets is zeker, zo blijkt, en een richting kiezen in het leven is niet evident. Soms loopt het goed, soms stel je achteraf vast dat het niet de goede keuze was. Grossi bevestigt na Vuistslagen zijn grote literaire talent.
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