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marc129 's review for:
The Eight Mountains
by Paolo Cognetti
"You cannot go back to the mountain that is the center of all others, and the beginning of your own history"
This is simply one of the best written stories I read in recent years. The tone of narrator Pietro, even though it is a bit restreined, is spot on from start to finish. His eye for details, especially in the descriptions of nature in the mountains, is phenomenal and not just random, but always with an underlying layer. The structure of the book is perfectly balanced, with first a coming of age section very similar to Mark Twain, a surprising middle section in which friendship is central, and the perhaps somewhat predictable final section that still appeals through the sophisticated alternation of episodes. The book is remarkably accessible, no modernist experiments with Cognetti, giving it the space that is typical for a classic story.
Many readers think that this book is only about the beautiful, though unlikely friendship between "professional mountain dweller" Bruno and the city boy Pietro. Or about Pietro's difficult relationship with his inscrutable father Gianni. Or that it’s just an ode to the beauty and power of the mountain nature, specifically the mountains in the north-west of Italy (not the Dolomites, as I see wrongly mentioned in many reviews). And of course, this book is about all these themes, and Cognetti has processed them cleverly. In some ways, this book is similar to that of Nan Shepherd’s [b:The Living Mountain|25773742|The Living Mountain|Nan Shepherd|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1434993148l/25773742._SY75_.jpg|7230627]; her ode to the Scottish Cairn Mountains shows, just like this one by Cognetti, how the landscape itself gives meaning to our lives at least as much as vice versa.
But according to me the central theme of this book is actually Pietro's search for himself. In that sense, this book is another version of the Everyman- or Peer Gynt quest, a beautiful 21st century version of it. The final paragraph in particular summarizes it nicely: “Long after I had stopped following my father's paths, I had learned from him that in some lives there are mountains that you cannot return to. That in lives like mine and his, you cannot go back to the mountain that is the center of all others, and the beginning of your own history. And that people like us, who have lost a friend on the first and highest mountain, have no choice but to wander about the eight mountains.”
Perhaps almost all of us spend our entire lives wandering on those eight mountains, yearning for that one big, inaccessible peak in the middle. Cognetti did a great job in reminding us of this.
This is simply one of the best written stories I read in recent years. The tone of narrator Pietro, even though it is a bit restreined, is spot on from start to finish. His eye for details, especially in the descriptions of nature in the mountains, is phenomenal and not just random, but always with an underlying layer. The structure of the book is perfectly balanced, with first a coming of age section very similar to Mark Twain, a surprising middle section in which friendship is central, and the perhaps somewhat predictable final section that still appeals through the sophisticated alternation of episodes. The book is remarkably accessible, no modernist experiments with Cognetti, giving it the space that is typical for a classic story.
Many readers think that this book is only about the beautiful, though unlikely friendship between "professional mountain dweller" Bruno and the city boy Pietro. Or about Pietro's difficult relationship with his inscrutable father Gianni. Or that it’s just an ode to the beauty and power of the mountain nature, specifically the mountains in the north-west of Italy (not the Dolomites, as I see wrongly mentioned in many reviews). And of course, this book is about all these themes, and Cognetti has processed them cleverly. In some ways, this book is similar to that of Nan Shepherd’s [b:The Living Mountain|25773742|The Living Mountain|Nan Shepherd|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1434993148l/25773742._SY75_.jpg|7230627]; her ode to the Scottish Cairn Mountains shows, just like this one by Cognetti, how the landscape itself gives meaning to our lives at least as much as vice versa.
But according to me the central theme of this book is actually Pietro's search for himself. In that sense, this book is another version of the Everyman- or Peer Gynt quest, a beautiful 21st century version of it. The final paragraph in particular summarizes it nicely: “Long after I had stopped following my father's paths, I had learned from him that in some lives there are mountains that you cannot return to. That in lives like mine and his, you cannot go back to the mountain that is the center of all others, and the beginning of your own history. And that people like us, who have lost a friend on the first and highest mountain, have no choice but to wander about the eight mountains.”
Perhaps almost all of us spend our entire lives wandering on those eight mountains, yearning for that one big, inaccessible peak in the middle. Cognetti did a great job in reminding us of this.