the solitude of prime numbers by paolo giordano

As a novel I feel I'll have an eternal storyline itch I cannot scratch with The Solitude of Prime Numbers. As a series of shorts moving toward some sort of message, Giordano might have moved me more. In the end Giordano uses emptiness and lack of resolution as a plot device, and I respond with the dissatisfaction I feel he should have expected. I'm disappointed, because I was excited as I moved through the first half of the novel. was it indeed Michela at the hospital? Does Alice survive her anorexia? What happens when Viola realizes her film is ruined? Without these answers, even in the most obscured revelations, we miss not only the emotional payoff, but the lesson/movement/character growth, IMO. He's able to occupy a girl/woman's psyche as seamlessly as a man's and he shines when he's occupying interior spaces: 'she had grown attached to it with the obstinacy with which people become attached only to things that hurt them.' The lead characters battle with anorexia and cutting-very current, almost hip post-modern symptoms.īut where was the denouement, or the arc? The lack of completion of myriad thoughts and plot devices (SPOILER ALERT), i.e. Each painstakingly set-up scenario of adolescent and adult angst/trauma is left dangling like a series of complicated esher drawings that lead nowhere and are partially erased.

I want to love this novel, it's unusual, bleak, as real and demanding as gum stuck to your shoe, but there is no payoff for my time spent with it.

I finished this book moments ago and find myself irritated instead of thoughtful.

The solitude of prime numbers by paolo giordano