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the complete review - fiction

The Worst Intentions

by
Alessandro Piperno

[an overview of the reviews and critical reactions]

general information | review summaries | review and reception notes | links | about the author

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Why we haven't reviewed it yet:
Had a go at it, but gave up 85 pages in; the Judeo-sexual obsession and lack of any real action finally got to be too much (Howard Jacobson and Philip Roth fill our quota of the former, too many other books also offer the latter)


Chances that we will review it:
Not good

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  From the Reviews:

• "Immer noch eine Metapher, immer noch eine Pirouette, noch ein Superlativ. Räsonieren und Erzählen liegen im Dauerclinch. Es gibt lange Strecken, auf denen sich der Erzähler entspannt, weil er schlagende Situationen und monströse Momentaufnahmen aus dem Familienalbum vorführt, um diese Präzisionsarbeit gleich wieder zu verwässern. Da schielt ein Buch dauernd nach den großen Vorbildern, will immer mitten im sogenannten prallen Leben und doch zugleich schlauer sein als das ganze triebgesteuerte Treiben, bis es weder das eine noch das andere ist." - Peter Körte, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
  
  
• "Piperno's method, in this translation by Ann Goldstein, is to use lavish descriptions of his characters to tell the story, and while he's frequently perceptive and wily, these complex portraits ultimately fail" - Alison McCulloch, The New York Times Book Review
  
  
• "There’s no plot per se, but Piperno’s headlong prose is worth the ride, by turns slangy and incantatory, incisive and profane." - The New Yorker

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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Notes about the Reviews
and the Book's Reception:

       Apparently it made a big splash in Italy: prize-winning, best-selling, much discussed.

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Links:

• S.Fischer Verlag publicity page
• Piperno's Complaint by Jason Horowitz at Nextbook
• The Piperno Case by Rachel Donadio at Nextbook
• Flowering young girls and dirty washing by Franz Haas in the NZZ
• Piperno, il caso letterario che scatena le invidie by Gaia Giuliani in la Repubblica

• Bookslut
• Chronicart.com (French)
• Deutschlandradio (German)
• Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (German)
• Hardboiled (French)
• hr-online (German)
• Jowebzine.com (French)
• Lire (French)
• The New Yorker
• Progetto Babele (Italian)
• Retroguardia (Italian)
• StradaNove (Italian)
• Der Tagesspiegel (German)
• Giorgio Tesen (Italian)
• titel (German)
• Three Monkeys Online (Italian)

• See Index of Italian literature

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About the Author:

       Alessandro Piperno was born in 1972 and teaches French literature.

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