I trust you
Massimo Carlotto & Francesco Abate
Métailié
May 2010
11 €
Sunday, September 19, 2010, Paris
Crédit photo : Elisa Palmer
They did it with four hands, and you don’t even feel it. So I did a bit of snooping around to find out more about this Italian writing duo. Francesco, journalist and DJ, keeps a low profile on the web, while his sidekick Massimo counts exactly 65,100 hits in 10 seconds on Google. There’s talk of the “Carlotto case”, – worse – of the “borderline case” of Italian justice, and of young girl stabbed 59 times… For those of you who enjoy “Faites entrer l’accusé”-style stories: for you, the reading stops here.
Massimo Carlotto / Crédit photo : Sugarpulp.it
The book takes 4 hours to open and close. Every hour, you hear yourself read: “But it wasn’t a film, and there was no music”. There was plenty of music, however, when Sabrina wrote <page 43> this text message: “I have at least seven lives to burn. Seven like all pussies”. WHOO WHOO WHOO… And it’s around this time that everything starts to go seriously wrong for our character: Gigi Vianello.
OK, it sounds a bit silly, but Gigi isn’t exactly what you’d call “a hoot”. Portrait. Owner of a very fashionable gourmet restaurant in Cagliari (an Italian town in the province of the same name in the autonomous region of Sardinia), the title of which he uses to parade around and – above all – to conceal his innumerable deals in tainted food and junk food, which fill his pockets copiously. Inveterate lover of women. Representative of the manipulative elite. Entrepreneurial liar. Compulsive maniac, even outright fetishist. He’s all these things, “and much more besides”. Yes, yes, a bit like Denver.
The 183 pages of this masterpiece give us plenty of time to catch our breath and be on high alert (sunflower oil, sausages, palm oil, fish, steaks, goat’s cheese, GMO rice, almonds, clams…), while Gigi slips and slides, etymologically page after page, into the same shit. A “play, bet, gamble until you lose everything” destiny that never lets the light shine through. But not an ounce.
“Histoire de cul, Gigi, it’s always and exclusively a story about an ass that ends up fucking you”. <page 137>
PS/For lack of appetite, one of those real pleasures to read.
Elisa Palmer
Cette publication est également disponible en : Français (French)
