Product Description

He had learned his lesson. Choices are made in a few seconds and paid for in the time that remains. A prime number is inherently a solitary thing: it can only be divided by itself, or by one; it never truly fits with another. Alice and Mattia also move on their own axes, alone with their personal tragedies. As a child Alice's overbearing father drove her first to a terrible skiing accident, and then to anorexia. When she meets Mattia she recognises a kindred spirit, and Mattia reveals to Alice his terrible secret: that as a boy he abandoned his mentally-disabled twin sister in a park to go to a party, and when he returned, she was nowhere to be found. These two irreversible episodes mark Alice and Mattia's lives for ever, and as they grow into adulthood their destinies seem irrevocably intertwined. But then a chance sighting of a woman who could be Mattia's sister forces a lifetime of secret emotion to the surface. A meditation on loneliness and love, "The Solitude of Prime Numbers" asks, can we ever truly be whole when we're in love with another?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8740 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Review
Clear, heartbreakingly precise prose, the youngest ever winner of the prestigious Premio Strega (the Italian Man Booker)...a stunning achievement. --Daily Mail

Review
Very accomplished...melancholic, but strangely beautiful...The acute descriptions of teenage competitiveness, angst and aspiration bring to mind Alan Warner's writing.

From the Publisher
The #1 Italian bestseller and winner of the Premio Strega

Customer Reviews

Well crafted but far too slight
This book is a joy to read. Tightly composed, brief chapters crisply and evocatively sketch out the tale of two damaged children finding their way in life. Paolo Giordano, just 25 at the time of the books publication, must be considered a hugely talented and promising writer with a bright future, but there isn't enough in this solid debut to get overly excited about.

The book starts exceptionally strongly with the events that would shape the lives of the two main characters. These short, precise scenes are haunting, powerful and handled with expertise by the author. Michela, the vividly evoked, damaged twin sister, is written with breathtaking empathy in these early, tragic chapters. Sadly, after around 100 pages we are away from the seminal events of childhood and on a long detour into the mundane adolescences of an anorexic and a self-harmer. To his credit Giordano handles these well worn characters with maturity and makes them rounded and believable, but much of what happens in the middle of the book seems irrelevant and is often just boring. It is only when the spectre of Michela arrives once more towards the end that the book again becomes the moving, compelling work it threatens to be in the first couple of chapters. Credit must also go to the author for avoiding the terrible, predictable ending which at one point towards the end of the book seems likely.

The writing is beautiful and there is enough evidence of here of a talent in the making, it is just a shame that there is not more meat in a patchy and sometimes unengaging middle section. There is probably enough here to satisfy many - it is hugely readable and satisfyingly brief, and the book will find wide readership. I won't be going overboard with praise for Giordano just yet, but I'll be looking out for his next work.

Literary fiction as it should be
Although not wholly triumphant in plot, The Solitude of Prime Numbers takes the ambiguous form that is literary fiction and gives it a clear, precise and glorious definition. Definitely one for the reader who loves to see their characters squirming in a perpetual wrestling match with their inner selves.

Solitude of Prime numbers
I agree with other reviews--obviously the author is a promising new talent but the book was disappointing. Maybe it lost something in translation.