The Solitude of Prime Numbers - Hardcover

Giordano, Paolo

3.64

74,283 ratings by Goodreads

9780385616249: The Solitude of Prime Numbers

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385616244 ISBN 13: 9780385616249

Publisher: Doubleday, 2009

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

He had learned his lesson. Choices are made in a few seconds and paid for in the time that remains.

A prime number is inherently a solitary thing: it can only be divided by itself, or by one; it never truly fits with another. Alice and Mattia also move on their own axes, alone with their personal tragedies. As a child Alice's overbearing father drove her first to a terrible skiing accident, and then to anorexia. When she meets Mattia she recognises a kindred spirit, and Mattia reveals to Alice his terrible secret: that as a boy he abandoned his mentally-disabled twin sister in a park to go to a party, and when he returned, she was nowhere to be found.

These two irreversible episodes mark Alice and Mattia's lives for ever, and as they grow into adulthood their destinies seem irrevocably intertwined. But then a chance sighting of a woman who could be Mattia's sister forces a lifetime of secret emotion to the surface.

A meditation on loneliness and love, The Solitude of Prime Numbers asks, can we ever truly be whole when we're in love with another?

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Review:

"A very accomplished book...A melancholic, but strangely beautiful, read. Shaun Whiteside's translation is exemplary and the acute descriptions of teenage competitiveness, angst and aspiration bring to mind Alan Warner's writing." (Guardian)

"In clear, heartbreakingly precise prose, the youngest ever winner of the prestigious Premio Strega (the Italian Man Booker) explores how trauma and guilt can capsize emotional stability and leave the vulnerable in a wash of unease and loss...a stunning achievement" (Daily Mail)

"Moving...masterful...elegantly discreet" (Times Literary Supplement)

"An elegant fable...its recurring themes of loneliness and longing shimmer through trim and supple prose" (Prospect Magazine)

"Genius...everybody can find in Giordano's book a small piece of himself" (Il Giornale)

Review:

Very accomplished...melancholic, but strangely beautiful...The acute descriptions of teenage competitiveness, angst and aspiration bring to mind Alan Warner's writing.

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