Me and You

by Niccolo Ammaniti, Rupert Degas (Read by)

Overview

Lorenzo Cumi is a fourteen-year-old misfit. To quell the anxiety of his concerned, socially conscious parents, he tells them he’s been invited on an exclusive ski vacation with the popular kids. On the morning of the trip, Lorenzo demands that his mother drop him off before they arrive at the train station, insisting that his status will be compromised if he shows up accompanied by his mother. Reluctantly, she agrees, and as soon as she is safely out of the vicinity, he turns around and makes his way back to his neighborhood, to put his real plan in motion: for one blessed week, Lorenzo will retreat to a forgotten cellar in his family’s apartment building, where he will live in perfect isolation, keeping the adult world at bay.

But when his estranged half-sister, Olivia, shows up in the cellar unexpectedly, his idyll is shattered, and the two become locked in a battle of wills—forced to confront the very demons they are each struggling to escape.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781486204908
Publisher:	Bolinda Audio
Publication date:	05/15/2014
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 5.50(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

Niccolò Ammaniti was born in Rome in 1966. He has written two collections of short stories and six novels, four of which have been translated into English. His second novel, I'll Steal You Away, was long listed for The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. He was the youngest ever winner of the Italian Viareggio Literary Prize for Fiction for his bestselling novel I'm Not Scared, which has been translated into thirty-five languages. As God Commands received the prestigious Premio Strega Prize in 2007, and his novel Me and You was made into a feature film by Bernardo Bertolucci.

Editorial Reviews

Already a bestseller in Italy, Ammaniti’s slim but immensely engaging fourth novel presents Lorenzo Cuni, a precocious 14-year-old desperate for some space of his own. He achieves this respite from reality with “Operation Bunker,” an elaborate ruse whereby his parents believe he is skiing in the Italian Alps, when actually he has secluded himself in the basement of the family’s apartment building. Settling in among dust, sheets, and other items of a “Fifties household amassed in a cellar,” Lorenzo surveys the food and video games he’s stockpiled and hunkers down for a glorious week of self-induced solitary confinement. Lorenzo describes his childhood as a friendless existence, much befitting the diminutive outcast that he’s become, and as narrative sympathy swells, Ammaniti expertly ratchets up the suspense with a rare appearance by half-sister Olivia, 23. Feigning homelessness and a mysterious illness, she joins him in an emotional reunion that soon morphs into a bittersweet, heartbreaking alliance. Both tender and emotionally arresting, Ammaniti’s novel is unforgettable. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

In this novel by best-selling Italian author Ammaniti (I'm Not Scared; As God Commands), Lorenzo, craving solitude, lies to his parents about going with classmates on a skiing vacation to Cortina and hides out in the basement of their Rome apartment building. This falsehood pleases his mother, who is overjoyed at the acceptance of her misfit 14-year-old son by popular kids. After a day or two of sleeping late, playing video games, and eating junk food, Lorenzo is stunned when his estranged half-sister, Olivia, whom he barely knows and who is ten years his senior, knocks on the door of his basement refuge, in need of a place to crash. When she becomes ill, Lorenzo does all he can to help her, even visiting his gravely ill grandmother in the hospital to find medicine. As their week together draws to a close, the two develop a strong bond. An afterword about what happens to Olivia makes a powerful climax to this well-written book. VERDICT Ammaniti is a fantastic writer, with the ability to deliver a lingering verbal punch in the gut. This suspenseful yet clever and elegant novel is a sure winner. [See Prepub Alert, 8/8/11.]—Lisa Rohrbaugh, Leetonia Community P.L., OH

Library Journal

A boy and girl, family love and family secrets come together in Italian author Ammaniti's latest (As God Commands, 2009, etc.). The author elegizes adolescence fiercely and sympathetically. His 14-year-old hero, Lorenzo Cumi, is a great character, part Young Werther, part Kurt Cobain. In the city of Bernini and Michelangelo, Lorenzo is an artless rebel, diagnosed by a dim shrink with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Actually just alienated, he relieves boredom by bullying. Busted, he retreats, like a Kafka character, into imagining he's an insect; in his case, a sort of SuperBug. Success at soccer gives him new credibility with his schoolmates, and he fantasizes about an invite to a ski trip with the popular gang. It's only a dream, though, so when trip time arrives, Lorenzo lies to his parents that he is going and retreats for a week to a forgotten cellar in his parents' home. Bliss—and he won't be missed. Solaced by Nutella, PlayStation and Stephen King novels, he's living Introvert Idyll until his mom keeps calling his cell phone, demanding to speak to the mom who's hosting the ski jaunt. And then an unlikely conspirator intervenes. Just in time to fake a convincing mom voice, Lorenzo's long-lost sister Olivia stumbles into the bunker. Luscious at 24, Olivia's just as cool, or even coldly confident, as the girl Lorenzo had once had a crush on, but there's something now different about her. A fear in her eyes. Track marks on her arms. And as this odd, intense Roman holiday unwinds, brother and sister begin to reconnect—and try to rescue each other. Scary, lovely and at last a heartbreaker.

Kirkus Reviews