Safe Return Doubtful

translated from the Italian by Michael F. Moore

This is the coming of age story of a twelve-year-old boy, Gigio Bellandi, told in his own voice, over the course of a summer in the small seaside town on the Tuscan coast in 1972, during which he discovers a love of music, of reading, but also experiences anxiety, desire, and first love. Then the unthinkable happens, and that wonderful summer is interrupted for something very different.

Veronese’s writing brings that time in Gigio’s life alive; the images, the smells, colours and sounds and the irreversible event that pales it all into insignificance. The cast of characters around Grigio are beautifully described, victims and culprits together, his parents who mean so much to him, his wise far beyond her years, little sister, and the two other significant influences, the mysterious Uncle Giotti, and Astel Raimondi, a girl a year older than him, who he falls for, and with who with perfect timing, they exchange a first kiss.

We know also that Gigio is writing from his mid-sixties, so he has evidently managed to heal the wound, continue to live his life, and gain some degree of understanding from that once beautiful, now remembered only as fateful, summer.

My GoodReads score 5 / 5