Book review: The solitude of Prime numbers - Paolo Giordana

After reading a bunch of detectives and thrillers I decided it was time for me to read an award winning novel again. Usually award winning is equal for well written literature.


I opted for The Solitude of Prime Numbers since it was standing patiently on my bookshelves and I heard great things about the book.


Before I start my review let me tell you what the story is about:


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.


At first I really enjoyed the book although it has quite a depressing tone. It reads easy and the chapters are not too long but tell everything you need to know. The description of Alice's and Mattia's high school years was very vivid and brings you back to your own high school memories (good or bad)


What first distracted me from reading the novel was the way the author uses the perspective of the main characters. He switched between them sometimes in the middle of a scene. I am not an acclaimed author by any means (sad but true ;-), but I do know that engaging your readers can be done by using the correct perspective in story-telling.
example


I would have loved it if the story of Michaela was explained a bit more. Now that story-line was unfinished and left me with a lot of unanswered questions.


I did like the flow of the book. The author chose to leave big time gaps in the story. One chapter is written in 1984 when Mattia and Alice are teenager, the next chapter is written in 1990 when they are young adults. This enabled the author to write about a 24 year time span, without having to write a novel more then  a 1000 pages.


As for the end of the book.. I didn't get it!! I just didn't. Never happened before.
So please enlighten me if you have a clear idea what the deeper meaning of the end was.


I guess I am going back to reading my less literature-like detectives and thrillers.


Facts:

• 318 pages
• read in Dutch (De eenzaamheid der priemgetallen)
• Won the Premio Strega literary award