Tag: fiction

Book Review – The Perfect Circle by Claudia Petrucci, translated by Anne Milano Appel @WorldEdBooks

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About the Book

In the round house on Via Saterna, its Palladian square exterior nothing but a trompe-l’oeil, the sun pierces through the central skylight. Its rays pass three floors unobstructed, before reaching the circle below at the heart of the house: four fingers of water filling a little silver basin. It is here that young Lidia dies, setting an end to her clandestine love affair with the ambitious architect.

It is this house that real-estate agent Irene is asked to sell, decades later, as the climate catastrophe escalates, cloaking the divided city in a permanent orange haze. Returning to her native Milan for the sale, Irene feels the brunt of her father’s judgement. He is a proud Italian and prouder architect—how could his own daughter make a living selling cultural patrimony to the highest foreign bidder?

As she faces this new Milan and the old family tensions she had avoided while living in Rome, Irene throws herself into the impossible sale, getting to know Via Saterna intimately—this space that is as unsettling as it is hostile, with the slowly emerging traces of Lidia’s interrupted life. In every room of the house, the burden of a mysterious, unresolved past can be felt, remnants of a selfish and manipulative love.

Format: Paperback (242 pages) Publisher: World Editions
Publication date: 7th April 2026 Genre: Fiction

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My Review

The book alternates between two timelines – one set in the near future and the other in the 1980s – which progress in opposite directions chronologically.

In the storyline set in the near future, Milan is a city shrouded in dense fog, the result of climate change. There is social unrest prompting calls from some for construction of a wall to separate the crime-ridden parts of the city from the rest. All this gives an unsettling feel to the book, a suitable backdrop as it turns out to events in the house on Via Saterna. Irene has been commissioned to sell the house at auction by a lawyer named Ferrari. A specialist in selling heritage properties to wealthy investors, Irene is confident she can get a good price even given its unusual design. Ferrari is not so sure about its arcihtectural merits, adding ‘I would venture a certain amount of bad luck looms over this property.’

Irene sets about researching the history of the house and making an inventory of its contents. What she comes across both surprises and alarms her. And there are things that just don’t make sense. As she spends more time in the house, it starts to exert a strange pull on her.

The second storyline unfolds in reverse chronological order, gradually revealing the events that led up to the death in 1986 of Lidia, the young woman who once owned the house and commissioned its ambitious redesign. As the reader discovers, it’s a tragedy born out of a betrayal whose consequences will be played out in a most unexpected way decades later.

There are very many clever touches such as the fact the design of the house on Via Saterna is centred around a skylight through which the sun illuminates a silver basin filled with water at certain points of the day, whereas Milan is now shrouded in fog so dense that sunlight rarely penetrates it.

The Perfect Circle is a very cleverly plotted story with an ending that reflects the book’s title in a most satisfying way.

I received a review copy courtesy of World Editions via NetGalley.

In three words: Intriguing, atmospheric, assured

About the Author

Claudia Petrucci studied Modern Letters in Milan before moving to Perth, Australia. Her reportages and short stories—which range from realistic to weird to science fiction—have been published on Cadillac, minima&moralia, and elsewhere. 

The Performance is her debut novel. It was shortlisted for the John Fante Award and won the prestigious Premio Flaiano Giovani, for writers under 30. It was also book of the day on Fahrenheit, an Italian radio program, and it has been translated into German and French. The Perfect Circle is her second novel to be translated into English. (Photo/bio: Publisher author page)

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About the Translator

Anne Milano Appel is a translator and a former library administrator, and she has a doctorate in Romance languages. She has translated works by a number of leading Italian authors, including the award-winning Antonio Scurati and Paolo Maurensig. Her awards include the Italian Prose in Translation Award, the John Florio Prize for Italian Translation, and the Northern California Book Award for Translation. 

Book Review – Tin Man by Sarah Winman

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About the Book

It begins with a painting won in a raffle: fifteen sunflowers, hung on the wall by a woman who believes that men and boys are capable of beautiful things.

And then there are two boys, Ellis and Michael,
who are inseparable.
And the boys become men,
and then Annie walks into their lives,
and it changes nothing and everything.

Format: ebook (214 pages) Publisher: Tinder Press
Publication date: 27th July 2017 Genre: Fiction

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My Review

Tin Man is described by the publishers as ‘a love letter to human kindness and friendship, loss and living’ and I think that’s an apt summary of this gentle, very moving novel.

The book opens in 1950 when Dora Judd, pregnant with her first child, becomes mesmerized by a reproduction of Van Gogh’s painting ‘Sunflowers’, one of several prizes in a raffle in the local Community Centre. The painting stirs happy memories of seeing the original on a school trip. When she draws a winning ticket she chooses the painting, much to the disgust of her overbearing husband Len who is more interested in a bottle of whisky. She hangs the painting in their lounge in an act of defiance, provoking her husband’s anger.

Move forward forty years and Dora’s son Ellis is living a lonely life of quiet despair following the death of his wife, Annie. His days are filled with the mundane routine of work in the local car factory, banging out dents as his father did before him. It’s a far cry from his early ambition to become an artist. A photograph of himself and Annie alongside his childhood friend Michael is a reminder of happier times.

Ellis and Michael meet as twelve-year-olds and immediately become close friends spending most of their time together. Gradually their relationship evolves into something more than friendship, one that requires secrecy. When Ellis meets Annie, two become three but in an entirely harmonious way. Then one day Michael leaves. It’s only in the second half of the book, told from Michael’s perspective, that we – and Ellis – learn the full story. I won’t say more other than Michael, like Ellis, finds what he was looking for but also experiences the pain of loss.

Tin Man is an exquisitely told story about the complexity of human relationships. Although unbearably sad at times, the author balances this by ending it on a note of hope.

In three words: Moving, tender, insightful

About the Author

Sarah Winman grew up in Essex and now lives in London. She attended the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, and went on to act in theatre, film and television. She is the author of the novels When God was a Rabbit (2011), A Year of Marvellous Ways (2015) and Still Life (2021).

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