Most of the book tells the teenage years of Mattia and Alice, a boy and a girl who both have a difficult past and and who have troubles coping with the world and making friends. It is some kind of love story and a book you cannot put down. It is strange and beautiful. It changed the way I thought about mental illness, about what it considered to be normal and about happiness and love.
The book is a series of episodes about Alice and Mattia, who carry traumatic memories in their lives. Because of their memories, they both feel left out from the rest of the world. Once Alice and Mattia meets in high school, they sense something equal between them and becomes friends from then on.
All of the characters that appear in the story have problems in their lives, and it was easy to relate to all of them. The book was easy to read, and I was able to read it in two days. The ending was not like I imagined, but I think it fits to the rest of the story.
Alice feels under pressure from her father and in an effort to avoid the intensive skiing lessons, she orchestrates an accident which leaves her permanently crippled.
Mattia is constantly irritated by his mentally-disabled twin sister and abandons her in the park on the way to a school-friend’s birthday party. When he returns, she has vanished.
As teenagers, Alice, now anorexic, befriends Mattia who has become a mathematics genius but is socially extremely awkward. Their awareness of each other’s pain at being the odd one’s out seems to give them a connection. As each grows into adulthood, battling their personal demons, their friendship somehow sustains them both while they each struggle to deal with their fear and guilt.
A haunting story which left me feeling rather sad for everyone involved.
[...] School: The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano Annexed by Sharon [...]
Most of the book tells the teenage years of Mattia and Alice, a boy and a girl who both have a difficult past and and who have troubles coping with the world and making friends. It is some kind of love story and a book you cannot put down. It is strange and beautiful. It changed the way I thought about mental illness, about what it considered to be normal and about happiness and love.
The book is a series of episodes about Alice and Mattia, who carry traumatic memories in their lives. Because of their memories, they both feel left out from the rest of the world. Once Alice and Mattia meets in high school, they sense something equal between them and becomes friends from then on.
All of the characters that appear in the story have problems in their lives, and it was easy to relate to all of them. The book was easy to read, and I was able to read it in two days. The ending was not like I imagined, but I think it fits to the rest of the story.
Alice feels under pressure from her father and in an effort to avoid the intensive skiing lessons, she orchestrates an accident which leaves her permanently crippled.
Mattia is constantly irritated by his mentally-disabled twin sister and abandons her in the park on the way to a school-friend’s birthday party. When he returns, she has vanished.
As teenagers, Alice, now anorexic, befriends Mattia who has become a mathematics genius but is socially extremely awkward. Their awareness of each other’s pain at being the odd one’s out seems to give them a connection. As each grows into adulthood, battling their personal demons, their friendship somehow sustains them both while they each struggle to deal with their fear and guilt.
A haunting story which left me feeling rather sad for everyone involved.