I keep a list of writers I have never read but would like to.
The list is long and grows longer each year, though occasionally, I’m able to check off a name, and I’m rarely disappointed in this choice.
I recently checked off a name that had been present for almost a decade. You, my gentle reader, should not wait so long to become acquainted with this writer, if you have not yet encountered his work: Domenico Starnone.
Starnone is popular, long-respected, and award-winning in his native Italy, the author of more than 20 novels, and the subject of (false) rumors that he is behind the pen name of Elena Ferrante, author of the Neapolitan Novels.
I read “Trust,” published in the U.S. in 2021 and translated by Jhumpa Lahiri, herself an accomplished novelist and short story writer. “Trust” is short, less than 160 pages in the edition I read, but it manages to cover many years in the life of its protagonist, Pietro, a teacher and writer, who by all external evidence is a good man, but who, internally, fears that he is a monster.
The novel is structured in three “stories,” each narrated by a different character, starting with Pietro. It opens with a recounting of Pietro’s tumultuous relationship with Teresa, a former student whom he’d been drawn to from the beginning and who initiated a relationship with Pietro once he was no longer her teacher.
The relationship is passionate but doomed. Amid a brief reconciliation following a particularly terrible fight, Teresa proposes a test of their bond: They will each tell the other something awful that they have done, something so awful that for it to be revealed would be ruinous to the other.
Teresa goes first, leaving Pietro speechless at what he’s heard, though the reader is not made privy to either of their stories. Pietro unloads his own burden, “first in fragments, then in greater detail, I didn’t want to stop talking; she was the one who told me to stop.”
Several days later, they break up under mutual agreement.
Whatever Pietro has done and told to Teresa looms over the rest of the novel, though it is not a spoiler to say that the reader is never let in on the secret. “Trust” is not that kind of novel. What it is, is a map of a man’s interior as he goes on to marry, have children, become a surprise quasi-celebrity on issues of education, and teach many more generations of students, even as he wonders about this secret he’s given to someone else.
His wife Nadia is the opposite of Teresa: shy and engaged to someone else when Pietro makes his desires known. She ultimately cannot resist him, and we see early evidence of Pietro’s greatest strength, a kind of charm that draws others to him. This includes his editor and a publicist to whom he grows perhaps too close, and even a rival who once attacked Pietro’s ideas at a public forum but becomes one of his closest friends.
The second, much shorter story is narrated by one of Pietro’s daughters who has become a journalist and decides that he is deserving of a national honor for important educators and pursues Teresa, Pietro’s most successful student and who has gone on to academic fame in the U.S., as someone to give an in-person testimonial at the ceremony.
The third, even shorter story is Teresa’s, adding fresh complications.
This short tale is simultaneously emotionally expansive and undeniably tense.
The power of the novel is in asking us to wonder if there is not some monster in every one of us.
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “The House of the Seven Gables” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
2. “The Reef” by Edith Wharton
3. “Ten North Frederick” by John O’Hara
4. “JFK: Public, Private, Secret” by J. Randy Taraborrelli
5. “A Rage to Live” by John O’Hara
— Michelle E., Woodridge
For Michelle, I’m leaning into her penchant for midcentury classics: “Stoner” by John Williams.
1. “Quicksand” by Henning Mankell
2. “Waterland” by Graham Swift
3. “Great House” by Nicole Krauss
4. “Jazz” by Toni Morrison
5. “The Aeneid” by Virgil
— Marcia M., Joliet
What an interesting mix of books! I almost feel like I could go in any direction. Here it is: “Infinite Country” by Patricia Engel.
1. “More Weight: A Salem Story” by Ben Wickey
2. “The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild” by Bryan Burrough
3. “Blacktop Wasteland” by S.A. Cosby
4. “Glass Houses” by Louise Penny
5. “The Eyes of the Dragon” by Stephen King
— James S., Elmhurst
Another varied and interesting list. You people amaze me sometimes: “The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne” by Ron Currie.
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.
John Warner is the author of books including “More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.” You can find him at biblioracle.com.
