Lost words
By: Nicola Gardini ; translated from the Italian by Michael F. Moore
Contributors: Moore, Michael, 1954 August 24- translator
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 232
ISBN-13: 9780811224765
Subjects: Working class; Teenage boys; Older women; Mentoring; Fiction
Work titles: Parole perdute di Amelia Lynd
Description: "Inside an apartment building on the outskirts of Milan, the working-class residents gossip, quarrel, and conspire against each other. Viewed through the eyes of Chino, an impressionable thirteen-year-old boy whose mother is the doorwoman of the building, the world contained within these walls is tiny, hypocritical, and mean-spirited: a constant struggle. Chino finds escape in reading. One day, a new resident, Amelia Lynd, moves in and quickly becomes an unlikely companion and a formative influence on Chino. Ms. Lynd -- an elderly, erudite British woman -- comes to nurture his taste in literature, introduces him to the life of the mind, and offers a counterpoint to the only version of reality that he's known. On one level, Lost Words is an engrossing coming-of--age tale set in the seventies, when Italy was going through tumultuous social changes, and on another, it is a powerful meditation on language, literature, and culture." --
Notes: "Originally published in 2012 [Milano : Feltrinell] as Le parole perdute di Amelia Lynd" --Verso title page.