La protagonista del romanzo non rivela mai il suo vero nome, ma a Shangai si ribattezza Xin che significa "nuova" ma anche "cuore". There’s an increasing sense of risk to their meetings, with ‘yellow pills’, more violent displays of affection and more than a touch of exhibitionism. Viola Di Grado’s charming prose romps through chthonic worlds of nibbling insects, ammoniac seepage, and shattering depression, using language that is both glib and scrumptious.

Another interesting feature of the novel is the use of, and musings on, language, with mentions of English, Italian and Chinese. This novel is dark, twisted and truly unsettling in its depictions of the darkness realms of grief you can experience. The was it’s set in such an advanced city that’s forever changing, yet there’s still places that have tried to be changed but they revert back to what they once were.No m'agrada que ningú s'arribi a anul·lar o deixar de banda per la dependència que té cap a algú altre. Blue Hunger asks how we create our identities and how we escape them; it is a fever-dream of a novel, visionary and uncanny, that demolishes all taboos and wisely explores, in a wildly imaginative language, the twisted peaks of loss and desire. With her first novel 70% Acrylic 30% Wool she became the youngest winner of Italy’s Premio Campiello Opera Prima and the youngest finalist for the Premio Strega. Once there, though, she becomes numb, lost, merely going to work, sightseeing and living with her pain – until, that is, she visits a nightclub and meets Xu. Miles of golden fields, the kind you see in movies with long takes and farm workers with sunburnt faces.

Non mi hanno convinta però alcuni elementi chiave come la lingua cinese, Shangai e la morte del fratello, Ruben: topoi trattati con eccessiva fretta e superficialità ma non senza motivo, anzi, semplicemente non c'è stato uno spazio adeguato per svilupparli e mostrare davvero il loro potenziale narrativo, allegorico e in generale espressivo.

I was standing next to the wardrobe, an unpleasant and imposing wardrobe, and I wanted to get this subject out of the way and at the same time talk about it endlessly: since Ruben had been gone there was this messy jumble in my head of my thoughts and thoughts I believed to be his.

Come si fa ad anestetizzare il dolore, a continuare a vivere quando una parte di sé è annientata, annichilita, persa? Throughout the novel we explore their twisted relationship as in unfolds with the glimmering description of Shanghai as the backdrop. Every locale had a glamorous veneer, like the white people inside them standing around drinking, skinny and self-assured, with glossy lips and easy laughter. Early in the novel, Ruben describes how as a little girl during summer, she would open the windows, turn on all the lights and outstretch her arms and legs for mosquitoes to eat her alive.The way the narrator described the setting in China and Xu also seemed racist at times… If you’re looking for a wlw feel good romance this is not it. Both protagonists find solace by teaching language: in Greenwell’s case, English to Bulgarian students, in Di Grado’s case, Italian to Chinese students. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. I had an unpleasant sensation as if everything – the downpour, the blue, the arched concrete bridges, the abrupt lunges of the clutch – were coming into my head and getting stuck there. Di Grado imbues the corporeal mechanics of sex alongside sex as a form of “language-replacement”, something that supersedes verbal speech, creating a masterful narrative that conveys the ecstasy of new love: “It’s as if something inside me that had been fidgeting for so long had finally settled,” Ruben says.

Bright lights and city sights rub up against drug laden rendezvous in slaughterhouses, and nights spent at Xu’s apartment, surrounded by rotting food.Much of the strength of Blue Hunger lies in the nature of its core relationship, a visceral, carnal one that sees the foreign woman giving herself to Xu, submitting to her whims (and bites). To Beijing in winter, in the snow, on a tour, which, before Tiananmen Square, took them to a hotel room where they had to silently observe a sales demonstration for a knife set. After her twin's death, a solitary young woman leaves Rome for Shanghai, the city where her brother Ruben had long dreamed of opening a restaurant. Behind the drawn curtains was the sun, the day, but we were in the dark, trapped in a primordial night, from which there was no way out except a colossal Big Bang. I envied it because it didn’t have to decide whether or not to follow a strange and stupendous girl.