Title: The Eight Mountains
Expected publication: available now
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟1/2
Book Description:
Pietro is a lonely boy living in Milan. With his parents
becoming more distant each day, the only thing the family shares is their love
for the Dolomites, the mountains that hug the northeastern border of Italy.
While on vacation at the foot of the mountains, Pietro meets Bruno, an adventurous, spirited local boy. Together they spend many summers exploring the mountain’s meadows and peaks and discover the similarities and differences in their lives, their backgrounds, and their futures. The two boys come to find the true meaning of friendship and camaraderie, even as their divergent paths in life— Bruno’s in the mountains, Pietro’s in cosmopolitan cities across the world—test the strength and meaning of their connection.
A modern Italian masterpiece, The Eight Mountains is a lyrical coming-of-age story about the power of male friendships and the enduring bond between fathers and sons.
While on vacation at the foot of the mountains, Pietro meets Bruno, an adventurous, spirited local boy. Together they spend many summers exploring the mountain’s meadows and peaks and discover the similarities and differences in their lives, their backgrounds, and their futures. The two boys come to find the true meaning of friendship and camaraderie, even as their divergent paths in life— Bruno’s in the mountains, Pietro’s in cosmopolitan cities across the world—test the strength and meaning of their connection.
A modern Italian masterpiece, The Eight Mountains is a lyrical coming-of-age story about the power of male friendships and the enduring bond between fathers and sons.
My musings:
I love atmospheric stories with remote settings, so when I
came across The Eight Mountains, set in the beautiful Dolomite region in Italy,
I had to read it! The book follows the lifelong friendship forged between two
lonely Italian boys after a chance meeting one summer. Pietro is an only child,
living in Milan with his parents. Every summer, his father takes the family
into the mountains, where he climbs the rugged mountain peaks in the search of
something he never quite manages to find. One summer, Pietro’s mother decides
to rent a summer cabin, where she intends to spend the whole holidays with her
son whilst his father has to go back to work in the city. It is during this
first summer in the cabin that Pietro meets Bruno, a local fatherless boy
herding cows near the river where Pietro likes to spend his time. As their
friendship blossoms, a lonely summer soon turns into one of adventure and
camaraderie as the two boys roam the countryside together.
The Eight Mountains is a beautifully written, bittersweet
story that soon drew me into the stunning landscape at the centre of it. As I
had hoped, the mountains play a pivotal role in the book, representing the
longing each and every character in the book feels, even if they are unable to
explain it. Pietro’s father, whose conquering of the various mountain peaks defies
the lack of control he feels over the rest of his life; Pietro’s mother, who
loses herself in the tranquillity and the simple life the mountains offer; and Pietro,
whose friendship with Bruno fills the gap of the lack of siblings and the
troubled relationship with his often cold and distant father. Bruno himself is
a true mountain dweller, who will be under the spell of this wild and harsh
landscape for the rest of his life. The mountains were almost like another
character in the book, and I could picture them so clearly!
As the boys grow into men, the story skipped forward a few
decades, and we get to meet Bruno and Pietro as adults in the aftermath of
Pietro’s father’s death. Pietro, who has been estranged from his father for
years, must claim his inheritance, a house his father has built on the lonely
and remote slopes of one of the mountains. It was at this point that the
difference between the boys became really apparent to me. Bruno is completely
under the spell of the mountains that have been his home all his life, whilst
Pietro travels the world in search of something he can’t quite explain, much
like his father has done all those years. Written solely in the first person
from Pietro’s perspective, the adult Bruno with his sad childhood background remains
a bit of an enigma, and I would have loved chapters from the POV of Bruno to
understand why the mountains had such a strong hold on him that he would risk
losing all he held dear to remain there.
Summary:
Lyrical and introspective, The Eight Mountains is a touching
and often sad coming-of-age story of two boys from different family
backgrounds. With a stunning landscape that forms another character in itself,
this was armchair travel of the best kind.
Thank
you to Netgalley and Random House UK for the free electronic copy of this novel and
for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.
The Mountain, by Luca D'Andrea
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