(read in French)

Usually, I do enjoy Erri de Luca's works. He tells a short story, often about exile or childhood, and weaves in poetic themes that elevate the story. But in this one, it somehow falls flat. His poetry is a bit contrived, and if it reveals something, it is by chance rather than craft.

At times, it feels like a recipe followed blindly : evoke an image, then correct it, then over correct it and further the reasoning, and then maybe you get meaning. It used to work in Three Horses, notably.

The topic doesn't help, as it is dealt with in a very expected way. A Grandezza Naturale gathers extreme stories of father-child relationships: a daughter and her former Nazi criminal father; the son of God and his abandoning father; the student and rebel son and his uneducated worker father; the artist son and his uneducated father, etc.