I never read anything by Italian novelists, which is why I decided to try Private Life (La vita intima in the original) by Niccolò Ammaniti. It’s a good novel which would make an even better movie.
The main character is Maria Cristina, the wife of the Prime Minister of Italy and “the most beautiful woman in the world” according to social media. She is an inoffensive but extremely vapid creature who wants nothing in life but to wear cute outfits and exist in a state of bovine contentment. But people keep expecting that she do more. Her small daughter needs attention and care, her husband needs her to be a wife and not a flower pot, her only friend wants Maria Cristina to notice that he’s a human being and not a household appliance, and the press expects her to answer at least a couple of questions every few years. All these demands confuse the one-dimensional, stupid Maria Cristina.
Incapable of feeling anything beyond physical pain from stubbing her toe and desperate to spur on her atrophied sensibilities, Maria Cristina engages in a sadomasochistic game with an old acquaintance she thinks is blackmailing her. Or courting her. Or both. The weird tricks these very rich, bored people play on each other in-between virtue-signaling by way of their globalist opinions are tawdry and pathetic. The political and financial elites of Italy are depicted in Private Life as not so much wicked as vacuous and primitive. It’s impossible to despise or even dislike Maria Cristina like one can’t despise a cat or a guppy fish. If she were a tad more evolved, I’d call her immoral but to break moral laws, you need to understand them, and Maria Cristina is clearly not equipped for that.
It’s a good novel, and I’m glad that Italian literature is alive and well. If Niccolò Ammaniti is any indication, Italians really despise their elites but, hey, can anybody blame them?
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