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L'ESTATE CHE HO UCCISO MIO NONNO

Giulia Lombezzi

A witty, entertaining, and insightful novel that is often hilarious yet deeply heartbreaking, examining today's family dynamics and already receiving high praise.
Told in first person, through the sharp yet fragile voice of sixteen-year-old Alice, it is a "reversed" bildungsroman that delves into the weight of family bonds, generational tensions, and the conflict between love and emotional suffocation. Lombezzi demonstrates undeniable comedic talent and offers an intense and restless portrait of a Gen Z teen girl, her mother, and of contemporary family, highlighting its contradictions and hidden wounds.

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Loving your grandparents: a rule Alice had heard repeated since she was a child. But when her own grandfather moves in with her and her mother, she realizes that this commandment is impossible to follow. Though weakened by age, Andrea exerts his brutal and calculating personality over the entire household, driving Alice's mother, Marta, into a state of complete submission.

Alice watches in terror as her mother loses herself. It's as if an entire generation, with all its absurd and violent rules, has forced its way into the once peaceful lives of these two women, tainting it with cigarette smoke, ultimatums, and manipulation.

Alice's anger grows, fueled by the fire of her sixteen years. The mother she knew is disappearing, and she feels powerless. But how do you free someone who doesn't want to be free? What does emancipation really mean?

As caregivers come and go, drunken nights with close friends offer fleeting liberation, family arguments pile up, Alice begins to nurture dark thoughts.

A journey into her mother's past, to the seaside town where she grew up, and the revelation of long-buried truths mark a point of no return: Andrea must disappear. But is the only way to defeat a monster to become one?

L'estate che ho ucciso mio nonno explores the pain of being sixteen, the scars left by family bonds, and the demons lurking behind the word love.

Giulia Lombezzi, born in 1987, is a playwright, screenwriter, and author. She was a finalist for the 2020 Calvino Prize with her debut novel, La sostanza instabile (2021), which won the Kihlgren Opera Prima Prize in 2022. As a playwright, she collaborates with various theaters, including Teatro Franco Parenti, LAC in Lugano, and Iranshahr Theater in Tehran. She teaches creative writing in Milan and Turin.
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Published 2025-03-01 by Bollati Boringhieri

Comments

A contemporary teenager trying to piece back together the fragments of a mother she sees falling apart. What once seemed like an independent, attentive, and composed woman in her eyes turns into a flower slowly wilting. The writing feels like a diary, drawing us into Alice's life as she grapples with the realization that, even today, men's rest is often considered more valuable than women's. A powerful and essential story for the women we are today and the girls we used to be.

Nothing escapes Lombezzi's seismograph. Finally, a book that explores today's family dynamics in the most intelligent and entertaining way you could imagine.

A true page-turner, as only life itself can be. And Giulia Lombezzi tells it masterfully.

A powerful voice that dismantles the traditional family narrative with ruthless innocence.

With a clear and ruthless voice, Giulia Lombezzi sheds light on the cracks within families, the sins of fathers, the painful courage to seek redemption, and the fear of resembling what we fight against. The most challenging and liberating essence of any adolescence: "I was nothing, now I'm something." A novel brimming with irony and raw tenderness, a story that entertains and moves you to the very last line. A character, Alice, who stays in your heart.

I wish I could learn more about Alice. She doesn't manipulate me with whining, point fingers at me for the world I've left her, or shut herself in her room only to rush out and hide away again. Alice takes the lives of three generations into her hands and changes them forever. This book is a meticulous and turbulent archive of present memories, where all of us are finally seen and told through the lens of the future.

Giulia Lombezzi surprises and captivates readers with a fast-paced novel, but above all with a sharp and precise voice that guides the reader through a whirlwind of emotions and a story that raises more questions than answers, right up until the very last chapter.