the solitude of prime numbers by paolo giordano

There are, inevitably, prolonged episodes of self-harm and anorexia. Much of the novel is taken up with the pair's painful, awkward teenage years. The title comes from Mattia's notion (he's a maths buff) that Alice and he are 'twin primes', like 11 and 13, or 17 and 19, lonely individuals that are forever linked but forever separated. Giordano traces the next 24 years of their lives: their dislocation from society, their discomfort with their overbearing or overly solicitous parents, their distance from their schoolfriends and even from each other. Mattia, meanwhile, abandoned his twin sister in a park because she was mentally retarded, he found her an embarrassing encumbrance. Alice had a skiing accident, broke her leg and is forever labelled a cripple because of her limp. It is ostensibly a coming-of-age novel about two lonely children who had traumatic incidents in their childhoods. Add to that the fact that Paolo Giordano is the right side of 30 and that writing is, for him, but a hobby (he's actually a particle physicist) and you'll understand why I was tightening up my laces to give his pretentiously titled tome a good kicking.īut actually it's a very accomplished book and deserves all its success.

Anyone whose first novel sells more than a million copies worldwide, and goes on to win Italy's most prestigious literary prize, the Premio Strega, is bound to turn the rest of us slightly green. I was fully expecting, purely for reasons of professional envy, to dislike this book.

The solitude of prime numbers by paolo giordano