The Breaking of a Wave

by Fabio Genovesi, Will Schutt (Translator)

Overview

Winner of the Strega Prize: a young girl in Tuscany finds hope amid heartbreak in “a story about the lonely daydreams of outsiders” (Kirkus Reviews).

Smart, funny thirteen-year-old Luna lives in a small town on the coast of Tuscany. When her beloved brother, Luca, drowns in a surfing accident, Luna’s mother retreats into herself, while Luna believes that Luca still speaks to her through a whalebone washed up on the nearby shore. At school, stricken by her loss yet determined to carry on, Luna makes a new friend and ally, the eccentric Zot, a boy from Chernobyl. Luna’s fantasies will soon clash with the lies—even the well-intentioned ones—of the adult world, in this touching, funny, and imaginative novel by the celebrated author of Live Bait.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609453879
Publisher:	Europa Editions, Incorporated
Publication date:	03/21/2017
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Fabio Genovesi was born in Forte dei Marmi in Versilia in 1974. He is the author of Live Bait (Other Press, 2014), which has been translated into over ten languages, an earlier novel, Versilia Rock City, the memoir Morte Dei Marmi (Laterza, 2012), and the Strega Prize winning-novel, The Breaking of a Wave.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for The Breaking of a Wave

“But beneath the boundless flow of colorful anecdote, character portrait, and discursive dialogue in and around the Tuscan town of Forte dei Marmi, there's a story about the lonely daydreams of outsiders...this immense, good-natured, self-indulgent tale offers a cumulative celebration of life in shaggy dog form.”
—Kirkus

"Open the book to any page...and find there traces of impeccable humor and of daring magic, of innocence and of sensuality, as if the entire book had been animated by a single, unique breath of life."
—Aldo Grasso, Corriere della Sera

"A timeless tale of the power of imagination and of the strength possessed solely by those still capable of astonishment, of the extraordinary experience of being unconventional, even when suffering may sometimes be the consequence."
—Elena Masuelli, TuttoLibri-La Stampa

From the Publisher

2017-01-23
After a tragedy, a quirky collection of adults and children fashions a new kind of family connected by commonplace philosophy, community, and the possibility of better.Hairdresser and local beauty Serena is a single parent, mother to golden-boy Luca and albino daughter Luna. Forty-year-old Sandro is a sad sack who still lives with his mother, hangs out with two similarly hopeless friends, and works as a substitute teacher. And Zot, a Russian orphan boy from Chernobyl, lodges in the chaotic home of his grumpy, rifle-toting stepgrandfather. Love, guilt, need, heartbreak, happenstance, and the search for meaning connect this diverse group in Italian writer Genovesi's (Live Bait, 2014, etc.) latest, a wacky, sprawling tale of contemporary Italy phrased in casual, everyday language. While writing from several perspectives, principally those of Serena, Luna, and Sandro, Genovesi is happy to take the reader on narrative excursions, into the life of an overprivileged Russian toy poodle, for example, or the flirtations of a woman with a large nose at her bachelorette party. But beneath the boundless flow of colorful anecdote, character portrait, and discursive dialogue in and around the Tuscan town of Forte dei Marmi, there's a story about the lonely daydreams of outsiders. Luna's fantasies about the sea and its gifts of flotsam feed her efforts to understand Luca's existence and her own. Serena is battling depression brought on by loss. And Sandro is trying to address his terminal ineffectualness. Pain and alienation are the book's foundation, but its superstructure is a sentimental weave of modern life punctuated by Genovesi's sense of humor and fondness for off-the-cuff aphorisms: "If the future sucks so much, then shit, we're better off diving into all the present we can find." Winner of the 2015 Strega Prize for Young Authors, this immense, good-natured, self-indulgent tale offers a cumulative celebration of life in shaggy dog form.

Kirkus Reviews