The Plains, Federico Falco

"In the city, you lose track of the hours of the day, of the passage of time. In the countryside, it's impossible," begins the narrator of this story, who then proceeds to describe his daily life in a house with a garden where he has isolated himself from everything and everyone, perhaps trying to escape from himself. Time there is almost palpable, it moves slowly and allows one to feel the most minute details: insects, sounds, a falling leaf, the smell of damp earth...

This story begins in January, and is told in chapters spanning several months. The protagonist establishes minimal connections with people in the rural environment where he has self-exiled, remembers his childhood—that Italian war veteran who hanged himself after mistaking the town lights for cannon flashes; those stories his grandmother told, perhaps real, perhaps taken from some movie...—, recalls his arrival in the city as a student, his interest in the structure of the stories we tell, his determination to unravel the secret of their functioning; and he recalls his relationship with Ciro and their breakup, which brought him to this point.

This subtle, elusive, and beautiful novel addresses the grief of a breakup, the solitude that activates all senses, the secret wisdom of illuminating verses from some poets, the need to tell ourselves stories... This is a book about the passage of time and about the plain where a man lives who cultivates a garden and observes and remembers and writes.