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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
“I get it,” she said. “You’re just like all the others. Oh God! Why do people always live as if life can be repeated?”
Last summer in the city is a short novel that ruminates over life’s monotonousness and the mistakes and fail opportunities we waste along the way.
We meet Rome in the 70’s and are immersed in its everyday life through our main character Leo. He’s a man that doesn’t achieve much, he works in a small newspaper, goes to the movies everyday (something that would be impossible today to do with minimum wage and left me a bit jealous) and hangs out with friends he doesn’t particularly have any foundness for.
Then he meets Arianna and this is where my problem with the book starts. I think the issue is that I can’t read female characters written by men they never do them justice, especially in a book set in the 70’s. Arianna is a troubled woman who doesn’t really know what she wants but pursues Leo either way which ends terribly for both of them. Both characters are bad for each other and yet the narrative paints it as if only Arianna is the unhinged one, which i didn’t enjoy so much.
Other than that i did enjoy their little romance, it was bittersweet and filled with mistakes that could’ve been avoided but weren’t because they were young people in their 20’s in a city that was not their own.
But the chill didn’t go away. And so I did a stupid thing. I started crying.
Ultimately this is a book about depression, about loneliness and what lack of ambition can do to a person. It’s about knowing you’re unhappy and yet doing nothing to change it. And we have Rome in the center of it all, with beautiful descriptions of faraway landscapes that have been lost to time.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism
Moderate: Death, Suicide
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
emotional
reflective
relaxing
sad
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
My roommate lent me this book after reading it and told me "This is the sort of book where nothing really happens" And now after finishing it, I would have to agree. In some ways this reminds of me of Hemmingway or Fitzgerald novel- a story about a young, miserable person interacting with friends and going through life, without much happening, but everyone seems to be making poor choices and drinking way too much. Leo, the main character, is really just to make it through his life in Rome, but his doomed love with Arianna ruins them both. And throughout the book, he is constantly 'at the end of his tether', like seriously Calligarich must use that phrase a dozen times.
There were some particularly poignant lines and ideas present in this work, notably about the character's parents that had all come of age during the war.
"Because, if I didn’t know, we were born just when beautiful old Europe was fine-tuning its most lucid, thorough, and definitive suicide attempt. Who were our parents? People who slaughtered one another on the battlefields of countries that no longer existed, that’s who they were. We were born between one furlough and the next, and the hands that had stroked our mothers’ loins were dripping with blood — not bad, as images go — or else we were the children of the old, the sick, the senile. The wrecked or the wreckers. We had the most fucked-up parents in history.”
There were some particularly poignant lines and ideas present in this work, notably about the character's parents that had all come of age during the war.
"Because, if I didn’t know, we were born just when beautiful old Europe was fine-tuning its most lucid, thorough, and definitive suicide attempt. Who were our parents? People who slaughtered one another on the battlefields of countries that no longer existed, that’s who they were. We were born between one furlough and the next, and the hands that had stroked our mothers’ loins were dripping with blood — not bad, as images go — or else we were the children of the old, the sick, the senile. The wrecked or the wreckers. We had the most fucked-up parents in history.”
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
one of the most glaring examples of why men cannot write women
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
at the end of my tether with this one, it has a few things going for it (atmospheric, a few good quotes) but lost me pretty early on and never succeeded in winning me back.
it is also, 100%, a book written by a man for men, for example:
it is also, 100%, a book written by a man for men, for example:
there was something poignant about her small, hard breasts beneath her light blouse
and that is not the only weird and deeply unsexy comment he makes on the subject.
also, the foreword basically tells you the entire plot which is dumb and definitely affected my experience of said plot.
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I don’t typically like classics and for some reason I keep reading them! No rating bc I just couldn’t get into this one and forced myself to finish it