The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano
The Solitude of Prime Numbers
by Paolo Giordano
(Audio)
http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/10106872
This is the story of Mattia and of Alice, survivors of childhood traumas, trying to make their way in a world they really don't want to be in. Adolescence only makes this ten times worse for them. But when they find each other, they recognize instantly something they recognize--damage, hurt, loneliness. They are twin primes, prime numbers found close together, just one number in-between. Can two prime numbers who exist alone find happiness together?
Apparently not.
Huh. This book was written so beautifully. And it has one of my favorite things: teens who feel like solitary outcasts coming into their own and finding a kindred spirit. But this story still left me cold. It just stopped. I felt like I must have missed something, so I went back and listened to the last few tracks again. Then I confirmed that there are only 6 discs in the set. Huh. Weird. I didn't get some big epiphany. I didn't get a happy ending. I didn't even get some sort of understanding about what I was supposed to have even gotten out of this book.
I do like the characters, though both have some awful things happen to them at the beginning of the book that will probably haunt me for years now. I liked watching them grow. I liked watching them figure the world out. But there were some scenes I didn't feel like I truly understood the meaning of. Like some literary fiction, it made me feel stupid and lost. So I tried to focus less on the meaning and more on the characters. And just when I thought something finally would come out of the story regarding Mattia's twin sister, the story just ends. And I'm left with images like the two of them in wedding attire or Mattia covering a chalkboard in equations or that drive through town or the dam and river or that disgusting candy... and no idea what I'm supposed to make the images tell me.
I hope it's a matter of culture. Maybe in Italy they don't need or want the sort of ending tied up with a bow that I was expecting; maybe Italian readers need exactly what this book provides? Was this book originally written in Italian? Because, if so, I am AMAZED at the beauty of the words and sentences and descriptions. If not, I still think it's beautiful ;-)
But the beautiful way things are described and the characters I just wanted to hug were not enough to make me love this book. They were enough for me to want to keep reading, but now that the book is over, I feel empty and confused.