Trick - Softcover

Praise for Trick

"The real meat of this story is an old man's breakfasts and bath times with a wired-up four-year-old, his wrestling for the remote, desperately trying to find some space for himself and his work. Starnone, one of Italy's most accomplished novelists, knows the territory and delivers it wonderfully."--Tim Parks, The Guardian

"Their relationship, perfectly captured by Starnone's precise writing, gives the novel a rich foundation to allow for a juxtaposition of the old and the new, the rigid and the silly, while also providing readers with moments of pure comic relief, marked by the characters' signature, witty stichomythia."--Vox

"Short and emotionally astute, a shrewd mix of humor and dread that keeps you reading."--The Chicago Tribune

"Trick, it turns out, is a kind of ghost story in conversation with James's The Jolly Corner."--The Globe & Mail

"Domenico Starnone has written an emotionally complex, layered story whose brevity serves to amplify profound themes of self-identity, marriage, aging, death and the daunting sacrifices of the creative life."--Shelf Awareness (Starred Review)

"A superb, sometimes unsettling intergenerational portrait hitting on basic truths."--Library Journal (Starred Review)

"[A] new book from Starnone is an event to celebrate."--Kirkus (Starred Review)

"A maestro translated by a maestra. What more could anyone want?"--Jeffrey Eugenides

"I inhaled Trick, ran to Prairie Lights to get Ties, and inhaled that one too. Trick is fantastic--savage and funny and profound. A little masterpiece."--Garth Greenwell

"Astute and emotionally precise [...] This remarkably layered work encourages rereading to unearth subtle and new interpretations."--Publishers Weekly

"[P]oignant and achingly observed..."--Entertainment Weekly

"A sharp observation of two unlikely rivals matching wits and a trenchant analysis of aging, family and art, this deliciously addictive novel is a treat to read."--BookRiot

"Domenico Starnone's new novel Trick has all the coherence and intensity of a classic two-hand play. [...] Narrated in the grandfather's beleaguered, fractious voice, the book seems to unfold right before you--the voice so lucid and urgent all the emotional torque of what surges beneath the old man's interactions with his grandson--family secrets, a feeling of mortality buffeting up--assault the present, like they do when you're no longer young."--John Freeman, Literary Hub

"[E]ngrossing [...] Starnone packs a huge amount into a small compass..."--The Sunday Times (UK)

"Family ties and family dramas are at the core of this story, but both are written about with such stylistic elegance that readers will be astonished. Once again, Starnone gets it just right. Trick is a must-read!"--Huffington Post (Italy)

"Starnone expertly plucks some of the short story's essence, twisting and molding his own work into a marvel of metafiction that feels fresh and surprising."--The Washington Post

"In Trick, the sophisticated pleasures of meta-fiction live happily together with the elementary pleasures of a story well told, one full of suspense and surprise."--Internazionale Praise for Domenico Starnone's Ties

Shortlisted for the 2018 National Book Awards

A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction in Translation of 2018 book

Sharp, succinct storytelling and breathtaking prose combine in this new novel by the author of Ties, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a Kirkus Reviews and Sunday Times Best Book of the Year.

Trick is a stylish drama about ambition, family, and old-age that goes beyond the ordinary and predictable. Imagine a duel between two men. One, Daniele Mallarico, is a successful illustrator who, in the twilight of his years, feels that his reputation and his artistic prowess are fading. The other, Mario, is Daniele's four-year-old grandson. Daniele has been living in a cold northern city for years, in virtual solitude, focusing obsessively on his work, when his daughter asks if he would come to Naples for a few days and babysit Mario while she and her husband attend a conference. Shut inside his childhood home—an apartment in the center of Naples that is filled with the ghosts of Mallarico's past—grandfather and grandson match wits as Daniele heads toward a reckoning with his own ambitions and life choices.

Outside the apartment, pulses Naples, a wily, violent, and passionate city whose influence can never be shaken.

Trick is a gripping, brilliantly devised drama, "an extremely playful literary composition," as Jhumpa Lahiri describes it in her introduction, by the Strega Prize-winning novelist whom many coinsider to be one of Italy's greatest living writers.