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    Trick
    Trick
    Trick
    Audiobook5 hours

    Trick

    Written by Domenico Starnone

    Narrated by Will Damron

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Trick is a stylish drama about ambition, family, and old-age that goes beyond the ordinary and predictable. Imagine a duel between two men. One, Daniele Mallarico, is a successful illustrator who, in the twilight of his years, feels that his reputation and his artistic prowess are fading. The other, Mario, is Daniele's four-year-old grandson. Daniele has been living in a cold northern city for years, in virtual solitude, focusing obsessively on his work, when his daughter asks if he would come to Naples for a few days and babysit Mario while she and her husband attend a conference. Shut inside his childhood home-an apartment in the center of Naples that is filled with the ghosts of Mallarico's past-grandfather and grandson match wits as Daniele heads toward a reckoning with his own ambitions and life choices.

    Outside the apartment, pulses Naples, a wily, violent, and passionate city whose influence can never be shaken.

    Trick is a gripping, brilliantly devised drama, "an extremely playful literary composition," as Jhumpa Lahiri describes it in her introduction, by the Strega Prize-winning novelist whom many coinsider to be one of Italy's greatest living writers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    TranslatorJhumpa Lahiri
    Release dateApr 30, 2019
    ISBN9781977341884
    Author

    Domenico Starnone

    Domenico Starnone was born in Naples and lives in Rome. He is the author of thirteen works of fiction, including First Execution (Europa, 2009), Ties (Europa, 2017), a New York Times Editors Pick and Notable Book of the Year, and a Sunday Times and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year, Trick (Europa, 2018), a Finalist for the 2018 National Book Award and the 2019 PEN Translation Prize, and Trust (Europa, 2021). The House on Via Gemito won Italy’s most prestigious literary prize, the Strega.

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    Reviews for Trick

    4/5

    16 ratings2 reviews

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    • 3/5
      What did I think about Trick? I felt tricked by the author, if you must know. Starnone’s story started out with such potential. We have Daniele, an older man in his 70s, set in his ways, finding himself exploring his identity and reflecting upon his past ( and implications of choices made) while he babysits Mario, his precocious 4-year old grandson in his former home in Naples. Perfect setting for a haunting story of memories, familial images and deeply insightful revelations, I would have thought. Instead, we find an energetic child testing the limits of his grandfather’s patience (which, to be honest, are on a bit of a short fuse). The grand revelations hoped for never seem to materialize, although we do see some exploration of what it means to lead an authentic life and not one overshadowed with illusions. I found the balcony scene to be overly dramatic and even the “ghosts” that come to haunt Daniele fail to give this story the spiritual life it seems to be looking for. In the end, I was left feeling disappointed by this story.
    • 5/5
      You can tell a masterful piece of writing by how true it rings, and the sound this novel makes is resoundingly true. Daniele is an aging illustrator, attempting to put together a series of pictures for a deluxe version of Henry James's short story 'The Jolly Corner'; but he is interrupted in his work by a summons from his daughter, Betta. She needs Daniele to look after four-year-old Mario while she and her jealous husband are away at a conference. The story explores the few days that Daniele and his grandson share.This book could have gone so wrong, in many ways - it could have split the narrative between Daniele and Mario, for instance, or it could have had both Daniele and Mario come out unnaturally enriched by the experience of their time together. But this is real literature, and if anything is learned, knowledge comes free of cliche.'Trick' is translated by Jhumpa Lahiri, who has done an admirable job of keeping the prose tight yet also feather light. For a story that contains so many nods towards Henry James it is remarkably readable (I have yet to read a James novel to its conclusion, but 'Trick' took me two days in an otherwise busy schedule).I must makes special mention of Asymptote, a literary journal that specialises in works in translation; without them I would never have come across this magnificent book, and for that I am inordinately thankful.