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No place is safe: The Brittle Age, by Donatella di Pietrantonio, reviewed

When her daughter, a student in Milan, is left traumatised after being mugged, Lucia is reminded of her own violent introduction to adulthood at a similar ‘brittle age’

7 June 2025

9:00 AM

7 June 2025

9:00 AM

The Brittle Age Donatella di Pietrantonio, translated by Ann Goldstein

Europe Editions, pp.192, 14.99

This slim, unsettling novel opens with Lucia trying to navigate the ‘mess’ of her daughter Amanda’s return home to their apartment near Pescara, in Italy’s Abruzzo. Pieces of torn bread, a heaped-up blanket and other strange ‘traces’ are indications of Amanda’s emotional disarray after hastily leaving Milan on the eve of lockdown.

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