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A review by silverliningsandpages
Snow, Dog, Foot by Claudio Morandini
5.0
Snow, Dog, Foot by Claudio Morandini is a brilliant novella about the prickly, paranoid Adelmo Farandola who lives high in the Italian Alps. In summer he wanders the valleys and Keeps track of a mountain ranger who he believes is spying on him. His only company is a stray dog that is cantankerous and talkative (yes, you read that right). When they are snowed in during winter, and food supplies run low, they squabble over crumbs and contemplate who will eat the other first! With the thawing of spring, Adelmo’s fading grasp of reality is stretched by a human foot protruding from the snow.
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This is hard to review without spoilers, but it’s a clever, psychological thriller about an old man’s self-destructive path from self-reliance to insanity. The descriptions of Adelmo’s squalid lifestyle are revolting, sad and at times really funny. He’s not an endearing character and yet the insights to his past and loneliness make it an empathetic account, and had me willing him to survive. I loved his interactions with the dog - you’ve just got to read it to see what I mean . And the third protagonist is actually the landscape in its harsh, hostile beauty. this has been so well translated by J Ockenden that the foreboding atmosphere is richly evoked. What seems to be a simple little story is actually layered with ambiguity, and I loved how the surrealism made me doubt myself in what I’d read, mirroring the deterioration of the protagonist’s stability. I smugly thought I knew how the story was going to pan out, but I was wrong. What a great ending!
4.5/5
.
This is hard to review without spoilers, but it’s a clever, psychological thriller about an old man’s self-destructive path from self-reliance to insanity. The descriptions of Adelmo’s squalid lifestyle are revolting, sad and at times really funny. He’s not an endearing character and yet the insights to his past and loneliness make it an empathetic account, and had me willing him to survive. I loved his interactions with the dog - you’ve just got to read it to see what I mean . And the third protagonist is actually the landscape in its harsh, hostile beauty. this has been so well translated by J Ockenden that the foreboding atmosphere is richly evoked. What seems to be a simple little story is actually layered with ambiguity, and I loved how the surrealism made me doubt myself in what I’d read, mirroring the deterioration of the protagonist’s stability. I smugly thought I knew how the story was going to pan out, but I was wrong. What a great ending!
4.5/5