Trick by Domenico Starnone: book review

Trick (2018) is set in a wintry November in Naples, Italy, over four days.

Grandfather and grandson are marooned together in an apartment. Daniele Mallarico, a successful illustrator, now over 70 years, has reluctantly come from Milan to Naples, to his daughter Betta’s apartment, to look after her four-year-old son Mario for 72 hours, while she attends a conference.

The grandfather has an obsession with his body; with its weakness, deterioration, and sluggishness after a minor surgical procedure. He reminisces about his youth. He does not like the dark. The grandson is a veritable bundle of energy, never static, always in motion. He is in his youth. He is not afraid of the dark.

The novel is from the grandfather’s point of view. Mario is a precocious child – and yet innocent, playful, and, above all, unbearable. Daniele is protective and an anxious caregiver – and yet also mean and aggressive. Why, oh why, does Mario insist on watching Daniele work on his illustrations and cartoons? Why is Daniele so obsessive about his work?

And then Mario plays a trick on his grandfather.

This is a battle of wits, a battle of minds, of two males at both ends of the age spectrum, at loggerheads with each other. It is a clever, well-paced novel with succint real-life dialogue, that is both enjoyable and thought-provoking. I loved it.

MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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