After reading Starnone's [book:The House on Via Gemito|63283383] I was interested in reading his shorter non-autobiographical fiction.

Trick is fairly short, and covers about 3 days in the lives of a 4-year-old boy and the grandfather who is looking after him while his parents are away.

The grandfather is aged and tired, but still working as an illustrator--and struggling with his declining abilities.

The boy is energetic, bright, and selfish as all 4 year olds are.

The two match wits, but only the grandfather understands this. To the boy, it is a game.

I enjoyed this story--and could feel for the poor grandfather. Four-year-olds are exhausting and clueless while also being capable of getting into trouble but not necessarily out of it. ( )

An elegantly written story that intertwines opposites such as hope/despair, confidence/fear, and young/old. All while intimately describing four days the narrator spends with his grandson. It made me appreciate good literature. I think the introduction written by the translator should be at the very end since it makes much more sense after finishing the story. ( )

Hoe meer ik van Starnone lees, hoe ik hem als auteur begin te waarderen. Geregeld heeft hij het over thema's als wie ben ik, vanwaar kom ik, waar ga ik heen. Ook dit boek is weer erg geslaagd in het omcirkelen van deze levensthema's. Hoofdpersoon Danielle, een boekillustrator op leeftijd, moet enkele dagen gaan oppassen op zijn vierjarige kleinzoon net op het moment dat hij weer (nog eens) een werkopdracht kreeg. Tussen de vermoeide oudere man die zijn leven begint te overschouwen en de levenslustige maar ook eigenwijze kleinzoon ontspint zich gedurende enkele dagen een soort machtsstrijd. Op zich is dat al een mooi uitgangspunt.
Wat dit boek een bijkomende glans geeft, is dat Danielle een nieuwe uitgave van 'The Jolly Corner', een spookverhaal van Henry James uit 1906 moet illustreren. Jhumpa Lahiri, zelf een interessant auteur, zorgde voor een Engelse vertaling en schreef daarbij een voorwoord dat hier in de Nederlandstalige uitgave werd opgenomen. Zij legt daarbij interessante parallellen tussen het verhaal van James en het boek dat Starnone schreef. Zij adviseert om beide verhalen te lezen om ten volle te kunnen genieten van de manier waarop Starnone speelt met de wederzijdse spiegeling qua thema's, verwoordingen, opbouw enz... tussen beide verhalen. Ik heb dat nog niet gedaan maar plan dat ooit wel te doen. Voorlopig hield het enkel bij dit boek van Starnone en daar heb ik best weer van genoten. ( )

What did I think about Trick? I felt tricked by the author, if you must know. Starnone’s story started out with such potential. We have Daniele, an older man in his 70s, set in his ways, finding himself exploring his identity and reflecting upon his past ( and implications of choices made) while he babysits Mario, his precocious 4-year old grandson in his former home in Naples. Perfect setting for a haunting story of memories, familial images and deeply insightful revelations, I would have thought. Instead, we find an energetic child testing the limits of his grandfather’s patience (which, to be honest, are on a bit of a short fuse). The grand revelations hoped for never seem to materialize, although we do see some exploration of what it means to lead an authentic life and not one overshadowed with illusions. I found the balcony scene to be overly dramatic and even the “ghosts” that come to haunt Daniele fail to give this story the spiritual life it seems to be looking for. In the end, I was left feeling disappointed by this story. ( )

Domenico Starnone is a highly respected Italian novelist whose works have only sporadically been translated into English. This short novel and his previous work, Ties, are both translated by the prize-winning novelist Jhumpa Lahiri, which gives the works a double dose of fame and trendiness. This is unfortunate, because it takes away from Starnone's work's intrinsic value, and the 20-page introduction by Lahiri reinforces this tendency. For fans of Lahiri I can see how the introduction is valuable, but I wanted to get straight to Starnone, as I do with other novels translated by highly accomplished translators.

But on to the novel itself, which is wonderful. The narrator is a 75-year-old illustrator/artist who has been guilted into taking care of his four-year-old grandson while his daughter and son-in-law attend a conference. The grandfather is devoted to his work at the expense of his family relationships, so this is a reckoning of sorts, made more intense by the fact that his daughter's family live in his ancestral apartment in Naples. Grandpa left Naples as a young man and is not looking forward to raising old ghosts.

Ghosts are apropos here, because the narrator has been commissioned to provide illustrations for a short story by Henry James which prominently features a ghost. His recuperation from surgery is ongoing, which makes returning to the apartment more difficult and fraught with remembrances, while also reminding him of his age and mortality.

But all of this internal ruminating happens in between the battle of wills that dominates the three days grandfather and grandson spend together, and it is an epic battle. Mario, the four-year-old, at first seems too advanced for his age, but as I read on and thought about precocious children I have known (and battled myself), I believed in him. They love each other but they are also 70 years apart, at opposite ends of the life cycle and with opposite strengths and weaknesses. Starnone's great accomplishment, or one of them, is to convincingly depict these two extremes of our lives. I believed thoroughly in the reality of both characters. And the supporting characters are similarly incisive.

I was utterly engrossed in the story, which takes place almost entirely in a smallish space and is fought on a circumscribed plain. But isn't that how we all live our lives? The more I think about this novel, the more impressed I am. ( )