Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #150066 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-26
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

Synopsis
This enormously engaging, strange novel is both an engrossing saga of a family and a hilarious account of addiction and failure as its helpless hero, notionally undergoing psychiatric help, manages spectacularly to fail to give up smoking, run his business or make sense of his private life. A hymn to self-delusion and procrastination ZENO'S CONSCIENCE has provoked enormous affection in its readers both in Italian and English since its first publication in the 1920s.

Customer Reviews

Smokin' Good!
While I tend to agree with the other reviers, I simply find it misleading that this book hasn't recieved a 5-star rating. When you look around on Amazon, books far worse than this one have something like a 5-star average.

Worth reading, but quite a prolonged narrative
Svevo's novel is intended to constitute the confessions of its narrator, a chain-smoking hypochondriac named Zeno Cosini. These confessions are produced at the behest of Zeno's psychoanalyst and take the form of a series of elliptical episodes, which cover the breadth of his life. Amongst other things, Zeno details his unpremeditated marriage proposal to a woman who he doesn't initially desire. In fact, much of the novel entails the narrator reflecting on his volatile relationships with others, particularly his brother-in-law (Guido),his wife's sisters and his mistress.

The novel is humorous in places and provides an interesting insight into life (however fictional) in the city of Trieste. The justifications that Zeno provides for his, often morally reprehensible, actions are also quite interesting. Unfortunately, the narrative moves at a frustratingly slow pace and some of Zeno's musings are also slightly prolonged.

Very rewarding
This book is an ironic twist on Freudian analysis. The protagonist (Zeno) is trying to give up smoking and, under the influence of the psychotherapist Dr. S., is reviewing the major events in his life to discover why he is finding it so difficult. Svevo was apprently not a fan of psychoanalysis (which was still in its infancy when the book was written) and his use of it as a framework is heavily ironic.
The chapters are structured around a few important events (the death of his father, marriage, an affair, a business failure) and these are not in themselves particularly special. The beauty of the book is the honesty with which Zeno records his thoughts and feelings. The attitudes he has are not always the ones most acceptible to the world, and it is this difference between his inner monologue and the way he behaves that sets the book apart. He is a weak and vain man, but he is a good man, something of an everyman. Because of this ordinariness, it was easy to identify with him (for me at least). This made the reading of an admittedly slowgoing book very easy indeed, and I recognised bits of myself time after time, which is a testament to Svevo's observation of people (and of himself). The book is slow and generally lacks a clear narrative, so won't be to everyone's taste, but I found it a very rewarding read.