Perfection

by Vincenzo Latronico, Sophie Hughes (Translator)

Millennial expat couple Anna and Tom are living the dream in Berlin, in a bright, plant-filled apartment in Neukölln. They are young digital creatives, freelancers without too many constraints. They have a passion for food, progressive politics, sexual experimentation and Berlin's twenty-four-hour party scene. Their ideal existence is also that of an entire generation, lived out on Instagram, but outside the images they create for themselves, dissatisfaction and ennui burgeon. Their work as graphic designers becomes repetitive. Friends move back home, have children, grow up. An attempt at political activism during the refugee crisis proves fruitless. And in that picture-perfect life Anna and Tom feel increasingly trapped, yearning for an authenticity and a sense of purpose that seem perennially just out of their grasp. With the stylistic mastery of Georges Perec and nihilism of Michel Houellebecq, Perfection, translated by Sophie Hughes, is a sociological novel about the emptiness of contemporary existence, beautifully written, brilliantly scathing.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Italy, Italian Literature, Novels, Germany

137 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 22, 2022

About the author

Nasce a Roma e si laurea in Filosofia all'Università degli studi di Milano con Paolo Valore (con una tesi riguardo agli argomenti ontologici a sostegno dell'esistenza di Dio). Lavora come traduttore a opere di P. G. Wodehouse, Hanif Kureishi (con Ivan Cotroneo), Daniel Spoerri, A.R. Ammons, Max Beerbohm, Francis Scott Fitzgerald e Rudolf Carnap (con Renato Pettoello).

Nel 2008 pubblica il romanzo d'esordio Ginnastica e Rivoluzione (Bompiani), cui segue La cospirazione delle colombe (Bompiani 2011).

Sempre per Bompiani ha pubblicato, nel giugno 2009, un testo teatrale: Linee guida sulla ferocia, con Rosella Postorino e Chiara Valerio. In inglese ha pubblicato i libri Remedies to the absence of Reiner Ruthenbeck (Archive Books, 2011) (tradotto anche in tedesco ed italiano) e Criticism as fiction? (Kailedoscope press, 2011).

Ha condotto per un anno una rubrica satirica, dal titolo Mai più soli, su Radio Onda d'Urto, all'interno della trasmissione di libri Flatlandia, rubrica ispirata da Kurt Vonnegut. Ha curato una sezione letteraria nell'edizione 2010 di Artissima. Ha scritto di arte su Domus, Kaleidoscope, Flash Art e frieze, e collabora con La Lettura del Corriere della Sera.

Suoi racconti ed interventi sono stati scritti per la Rivista italiana di filosofia analitica junior, Fondazione Novecento, Centro per l'Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci di Prato, Agenzia X, Io Donna, Il primo amore, Nazione indiana, il manifesto.

Latronico è uno dei protagonisti del romanzo dello scrittore portoghese João Tordo Il buon inverno, edito da Cavallo di Ferro nel 2011. Latronico, che nella storia è dipinto come arrogante e malefico, si è difeso sulle pagine della rivista letteraria "doppiozero" raccontando l'accaduto.

Reviews

[Adina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Update 09.04: Now shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025
I am bit surprised by the jury's decision but not unpleased. It can become a classic for the millennial generation. Now, I need to read its inspiration The Things by Georges Perec, an authority of the Oulipo movement.

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025

Books 2/13

Translated from Italian in English by Sophie Hughes

Perfection is a novel about two millennials working in Berlin, living the live but not feeling entirely fulfilled.

The novels starts with the description of an apartment, like a theatre setting. There are many plants, a work space etc. It is the place where the two main characters, Anna and Tom, live and work. “But it is also a life with room for joy, which is clear from every little detail. The long days are followed by a man¬datory hour offline to go out for a drink or flick through a magazine while curled up on the sofa, shielded from the cold. Beauty and pleasure seem as inextricable from daily life as particles suspended in a liquid.”

“Anna and Tom were creative professionals, a term even they found vague and jarring. Their exact titles varied depending on the job, but they were always in English, even in their native language: web developer, graphic designer, online brand strategist. What they created were differences” They work a lot but they also find time to enjoy the city. “The time that did not disappear through work was taken up by the city. Berlin was, to all intents and pur¬poses, their main pastime – exploring it, understanding it, feeling part of it. In a way it defined them much more than their profession did. They liked their work but not enough to give more to it than was absolutely necessary. They had fallen into the job. Berlin, on the other hand, they had chosen.”

As many millennials, they are addicted with social media and they search for meaning in Instagram posts. “These new emotions weren’t all negative. What was that rush they would get after a particularly popular post? And the itch that made them look up from their work ev¬ery twenty seconds, every minute, to refresh the page and watch the number of likes clock up, as if it were a stock ticker or a scoreboard? They felt it every day, and yet that feeling had no name. It wasn’t a scoreboard – there was no prize at the end. Financially speaking, it had very little impact, if any. Fifty-year-old sociologists would talk about narcissism, but they were only talking about them¬selves. Pop-neuroscience journalists would write about it in terms of drug and sugar addiction and depression”

Even if they have a solid relationship, well paid work and an interesting social life, they are not exactly happy. “From the outside, it was easy enough to identify the cause of their alienation, but to them, paradoxically, no explanation revealed itself. Anna and Tom lived in a bubble, one even more insular and limited than those just starting to appear on social media. In a way, they had become radicalized. They spoke stumbling English with other non-native English speakers. They inhabited a world where everyone accepted a line of coke, where no one was a doctor or a baker or a taxi driver or a middle school teacher. They spent all their time in plant-filled apartments and cafés with excellent wifi. In the long run it was inevitable they would convince themselves that nothing else existed.”

It was also hard for them to think about the future and find a purpose: “The future appeared out of focus. They couldn’t imag¬ine it being substantially different to their current life – so smooth and manicured – which itself made it seem rather abstract and unenticing. They had grown up in the shadow of the turbulent sixties and seventies; their grandparents had lived through the war and been tossed about by the raging seas of a century that had now ended, leaving only calm in its wake, as far as the eye could see. They would have liked to have been in their twenties for the summer of ’68 or when the Wall fell. Previous gener¬ations had had a much easier time working out who they were and what they stood for. The problems back then might have been more urgent, but they also had clearer solutions. Now there were too many choices, with each one leading off on endless branches, preventing any real change. Their idea of a revolutionary future didn’t go be¬yond gender balance on corporate boards, electric cars, vegetarianism”

As another millennial, I found a few similarities between Anna/Tom and me. I am fascinated by Berlin, it even has its own shelf here. I appreciate “IPAs from local microbreweries” and I cannot start my day without the “The smell of freshly ground, single-origin, lightly roasted coffee would waft from chunky brown and white porcelain cups.”. My social media of choice might be Goodreads instead of Instagram/Facebook but I still spend too much time on it. I have some of their existential questions although I have a completely different life in other aspects. What I mean is, that I could empathise and it made me ponder a lot more about this novel than if I had been of another age.

I read the novel in English and listened to it in Italian. I thought that the translation was excellent, and managed to keep the tone as it was intended in the original language.

[Fionnuala]

While writing this review, I was more than usually aware that I would be posting it on this website, where, every time I refreshed the page, I'd hope to find that it had clocked up some Likes and comments, each of which would give me a little rush.

That awareness leads me to think about how big a role the 'little rush' plays in my reading life—indeed in my life in general. What would I do if I couldn't write reviews anymore? Would I read differently, maybe give less thought to what I read since I wouldn't have an audience for my post-reading thoughts and discoveries?

Then I wondered what sort of person I have become that I don't read in the privacy of my mind anymore but need to air every reading thought I have in public? But at least I'm producing something with all this, I tell myself. I'm writing a reflection on books every week, and that can't be bad for my psyche, can it?

And so I feel grateful to live in this moment in time that allows me to write and be read, and to discuss and learn from GR friends' review writing and reading. After all, we can't all have review columns in newspapers as Virginia Woolf and many other committed readers did in the past. Readers like us could never have aspired to writing reviews in newspapers!

If you're wondering why this book prompted so much soul-searching, it's because it is about two people who live almost their entire lives on the internet. They are a couple, Anna and Tom, who work from home as graphic designers for websites—which means that every minute of their work day is spent online, and any breaks from work tasks are spent checking their social media profiles for Likes and comments on the well-curated images of their well-curated lifestyle which they constantly post on their social media platforms.

When they are not checking their own profiles, they are searching their virtual friends' feeds for new life-style trends, whether in furnishings, cooking, art exhibitions, or holiday destinations, which they then incorporate into their own lifestyle choices, ordering more and more trending 'things' for their apartment, refining their images of their lives further and further in the search for some ideal of perfection, a search that eventually leads them to sublet their Berlin apartment and transfer their online lives to Lisbon where there are great sunsets but the food chosen from the laminated menus full of garish photos is served on grubby formica tables. So they decide to relocate to Sicily where the scenery is fabulous but the airbnb is dark and dusty and crammed with what they figure must be the owner's dead relative's things. Living in what is more or less a museum to someone long dead is too much for them so they move back to their own curated space in Berlin even if it no longer meets the ideal they've been searching for. They have realised that the perfect lifestyle is not as easy to create in reality as it is on social media posts.

But Berlin isn't the end of the road for Anna and Tom, and Real Life steps in and redirects their lives in an unexpected way.

This book is something of a reality check for the way we live now and yet the really surprising thing is that it was inspired by and based closely on a book from the 1960s—long before internet screens and social media. That book, by French writer Georges Perec, was called Les Choses (The Things).
Perec's book is about a couple called Jérôme and Sylvie who aspired to a particular lifestyle—a classic apartment in the heart of Paris full of rich fabrics, precious objects, fine art, and beautifully bound books.
Perec used a documentary style in presenting the couple and their lives, the narration like a camera panning across their surroundings with little close-ups of their day to day activities but never giving much glimpse of the interior thoughts of his two characters—they never speak—so that at the end of the book, they remain as opaque as they were at the beginning.
Perec uses the conditional tense for the first part in which he outlines the lifestyle the couple aspired to, the present tense for the second part, and the future tense for the final part, their projected future.
Vincenzo Latronico does exactly the same thing—even to the three tenses and the lack of dialogue. And while we hear a lot about Anna and Tom's life, just as in Perec's book, we don't ever get to know them as people. The skill and discipline shown by both authors as they continually keep their characters at a distance from themselves and from us makes their texts a treat to read. At the end of Vincenzo Latronico's book, I still saw Anna and Tom as the blank avatars they were at the beginning, one short-haired, one shoulder length, both in dark grey on a pale grey background.

Anna and Tom's story ends in 2019 when they seem to have finally found their perfect lifestyle (far from Berlin) but the contemporary reader is aware of how their ultimate choice of a way to live will be impacted by the 2020 pandemic, something the author must have been aware of too because he wrote this book during 2020/2021 when he himself must have been living the isolating screen-based life he gave his characters though he had situated their story during the fifteen years leading up to it. I wonder how much the experience of the pandemic influenced his choice of recreating Georges Perec's 1960s novel for a new era. But future readers, who have forgotten the pandemic, may never ask themselves that question.

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

The narration is preceded with an epigraph from Things by Georges Perec and the story duly begins with the depiction of things… Inside and outside…

The next picture is of the building’s exterior, an Art Nouveau apartment block with acanthus leaf and citrus fruit cornices. The white render is all but invisible under layers of fluorescent graffiti, tattered posters and peeling paint. On the first floor, you can scarcely make out the stucco tympanums beneath the grime. The combination of turn-of-the-century luxury and raw modern grittiness lends a feeling of freedom and decadence, with a hint of eroticism.

We can’t do without things… They surround us… An apartment is in Berlin… He and she occupy the apartment…

They lived in a country whose language they didn’t speak, in a job with unclear boundaries and no fixed hours or base, and which was, to a great extent, subject to the whims of their clients and social media contacts. The environment where they slept and worked, and which they themselves had chosen and shaped, was the one tangible manifestation of who they were. That apartment and those objects weren’t merely reflections of their personalities: they provided a foot­hold…

They and their vocations are the products of the computer era… They mix with other intellectual expatriates… Their life is filled with fashionable modern emptiness…

They were in love.
The results of that love were all around them. Delicious hot meals, their bills paid, a job and home they liked – the details that comprised their life. It was a life they had created for themselves, building difference upon difference until it encapsulated the real them, with a freedom they would never have had back at home. They were proud of it.

Time passes… City changes… Everything changes… The circle of friends becomes narrower… They are in a lesser demand now… Their nomadic period commences…

They flew, then drove. The sensation of winding their way through the Mediterranean hills with their bags piled up on the back seat immediately made them feel like they were on an adventure; but the landscape gradually lost its splendour the further they drove from the coast, until it looked like any old countryside, which was what it was.

Wherever you are and whatever you do, perfection is always elsewhere.

[Orsodimondo · Rating 4 out of 5]

SPATRIATI



Breve romanzo su una coppia di italiani espatriati. Emigrazione intellettuale, per scelta più che per necessità. Anche se si capisce che la patria è sonnolenta e offre meno chance di crescita professionale. “Spatriati” per avventura, per curiosità, per inquietudine: via da Roma (o da Milano?) verso Berlino, quando partono hanno entrambi più di ventitrè e meno di trenta.
La città tedesca viene raccontata come una Parigi degli anni Venti, piena di stimoli sollecitazioni incontri. Anche se il loro tedesco rimane sempre insufficiente, e anche l’inglese è meno che “fluent”.
Presentato allo Strega di quest’anno (nella dozzina) con questa motivazione (tra altre): Lo propongo per la scrittura, così precisa da mettere in comunicazione e a nudo i protagonisti senza mai farli dialogare: non una parola tra virgolette.
Aspetto che per me rappresenta un valore aggiunto. È stato un primo incontro con la scrittura di Latronico più che positivo.



Anna e Tom erano dei creativi. Il termine sembrava vago e urticante anche a loro. I loro titoli professionali variavano ma anche in patria sarebbero stati in inglese – web developer, graphic designer, online brand strategist. Quello che creavano erano differenze… Fanno per soldi quello che un tempo avevano fatto per passione

Diviso in quattro capitoli, Presente, Imperfetto, Remoto, Futuro, che rappresentano quattro fasi della loro vita e sono raccontate ricorrendo perlopiù a quel tempo verbale. Anche questo è un aspetto che mi ha colpito positivamente.
Di Anna e Tom Latronico ci racconta la vita professionale, vissuta fianco a fianco, da casa (in smart working?), senza cartellini da timbrare, neppure figurativamente, ma scadenze, consegne.
Latronico ci racconta la loro ovvia attenzione all’estetica, a cominciare da quella domestica, anche se l’appartamento che affittano è già completamente arredato. La loro vita sociale, a cominciare da quella sui social, che costituisce attività quotidiana sin dal risveglio, senza mai abbandonare cellulare e tablet. La loro vita sessuale, in pagine molto belle e attente (come tutte le altre, d’altronde). La loro vita gastronomica, con una tendenza al vegetariano, forse più per trend che vera scelta.



Inseguono la perfezione? Forse inseguono la soddisfazione, la realizzazione, un’esistenza da “persone normali” che non vogliono essere normali. Senza volerla per forza chiamare felicità.
E quando si accorgono che
Le loro giornate passeranno a spostare di qualche millimetro una guida, a bilanciare i toni cromatici di un’interfaccia responsive in base alle particolarità dei vari display, a elaborare ennesime variazioni sugli stili visivi in voga…
Anche Berlino comincia ad andargli stretta. Seguono tentativi di trasferimento, di nuova partenza, qualche mese a Lisbona, qualche altro nel “Chiantishire” siciliano, per poi approdare nel Salento.
E vattelapesca quale sarà la prossima tappa. Ma mi viene da credere che un’altra ci sarà. Perché, casa è ovunque, ma anche da nessuna parte.

[Meike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now Nominated for the National Book Award for Translated Literature 2025
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025
Very much a Berlin novel - and, at the same time, not a Berlin novel: Latronico, an Italian living in Berlin, gives us a young Italian couple who moves from Italy to Berlin, and then proceeds to not live there - Tom and Anna hardly spend time with Germans, they mostly speak English and are part of a fluid community of expats, they get their news from international sources and remain partly in Italy via their social media feeds. They arrive at the heyday of the Berlin hype, after the fall of the Berlin wall when the city seemed to be vast and full of opportunities, and live through gentrification, before they chase their youth in Portugal and Sicily. Because yes: A lot of what they experience is simply called aging, growing out of a community and phase in life, in this case a nomadic escapist life as digital freelancers.

The protagonists with their generic names (in Germany, the joke goes that people in Berlin novels are usually called Paul and Marie and moved to the city from Swabia) are not real people, they stand pars pro toto for a social phenomenon, and this narrative decision has all the repercussions that are to be expected: Cardboard characters make for cold detachment and a lack of dynamic, everything is over-explained and described in excess, and the author amps up these effects by cutting all dialogue - Latronico hammers his message home without subtlelty. Tom and Anna arrive in Berlin at an intersection of personal and world history, they use the place as a projection surface, and then are starting look for another canvas to project the same image, which is impossible, because time has passed.

The aspect of digital staging and performance that has intruded on how we see and frame the real world gives the text an air of melancholy - and this is where Perec's Les Choses fits in, a novel Latronico explicitly refers to. Perec ponders the mores of the sixties with a focus on materialism and capitalism, also focusing on two freelancers, who also get politicized in current events - in Perec's case, the Algerian war, in Latronico's, the refugee crisis, which appears like another project to boost up one's self-image.

And yes, it's short and pleasant to read, but all the Perec references in the world can't hide that the message is stale and kind of obvious. I want my novels about the impact of the digital world to be more nuanced, and I've always hated Bertolt Brecht's epic theater for his non-characters that serve pedagogic rather than narrative functions. And that's kind of my problem with this one, too. Also, I've always agreed with Kraftklub when it came to the (now pretty much dead) Berlin hype: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UdRz...

You can listen to the podcast gang discussing the German translation Die Perfektionen here: https://papierstaupodcast.de/podcast/...

[Left Coast Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a painful book to read. Proceeding through these pages is like pressing down on an infected fingernail. Is the book about the loss of youthful joy that almost inevitably attends growing older? Or is it about the trap set by influencers on social media, always promising more than the real world can deliver? Or maybe the way a life, or even an entire society, can be compromised not by big bold strokes but my the millions of small decisions we make throughout the day, failing to see where it's leading us? Or is it about the role of luck in whether we end up prosperous and satisfied (or dissatisfied) or hanging on by a thread?

It's about all of these things. The happiness in reading books like this, despite the pain, is the celebratory feeling inherent in realizing there are truly talented artists writing like this. The technique in this book was very impressive -- an omniscient, disengaged narrator describing events with a consistent tone throughout, drip-feeding us enough information to see the bigger picture long before the young married couple at the center of the story do.

I don't relate to these people, but I certainly recognize them. I was truly impressed by this economically-told tale.

[Alberto · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ho imparato il nome di molte zone di Berlino. E di parecchie piante d'appartamento. Posso fermarmi qua.

[Trevor · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’ve decided to read some of the shortlisted novels for the Booker this year. Perhaps a mistake, since I generally don’t like the winners of the Booker, even when I like the authors. My least favourite Barnes and Carey novels were both winners. Anyway, I thought I would start with this one – short and sweet. Except, not particularly sweet.

This read like someone was thinking of writing a novel and decided to do a kind of fast draft – except, hardly even that. The whole thing is written in third person – so, you never feel like you get close to either of the characters. They are pretentious and dull and spend most of their time thinking how grateful they are that they moved to Berlin when they could still afford a nice apartment – in pistachio tones I think, lots of things in this are in pistachio – and so much of the book is descriptions of their flat or the clubs they go to or their equally dull friends who aren’t really friends.

There isn’t particularly much of a story here – it is meant to be a kind of sociological examination of the life of millennials and their working from home, designing webpages in pretty Scandinavian fonts. Man, I’m glad this one was short, because otherwise I would never have finished it. I spent the first half of the book wanting it to start and the second half wanting it to end.

Can’t say I would recommend it – perhaps I’m too damn old for it. Maybe you need to have had dull sex after a weekend on MDMA to really ‘get’ this one. When even the discussion on sex toys nearly puts you to sleep…anyway, each to their own. If my experience with the Booker is anything to go by, this will probably win.

[Henk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025!
Seriously enjoyed this short snapshot of life from the expat/hipster/creative/digital nomad perspective. The prose is cutting and fun, and hits just close enough at home to be both hilarious and kind of uncomfortable to any millennial

Home fermentation, socials, rave parties, contemplating threesomes, IPAs, genmaicha, rooftop bars of Sohohouse but not having a pension plan; I found this novel a whirlwind of zoomed in observations on millennial life and the emptiness seemingly perfectly curated Instagram posts can hardly hide. It's like No One Is Talking About This or Jenny Offill’s Weather, but with more of a narrative, more interesting and shorter.

Devilishly fun and scathing, drawing uncomfortable comparisons in the difference our society makes between expats and migrants. The general vapidness of modern day life, the corrosiveness of wanting an instagram proof life, and the lack of real money and security despite all the glitz and glamour on the socials, make this a highly recommended read.

Added bonus: easily read in a day, ideal for all our digitally reduced attention spans!

Dutch quotes and observations which I found both hilarious and sometimes too close to home for comfort:
Anna en Tom, creatieve professionals in Berlijn, waar ze geen Duits spreken

Een identieke behoefte naar een ander leven

De stad definieerde hen veel meer dan hun beroep

Een verlaat Erasmus verblijf

Boven de 23 maar onder de 30

Ze voelden ze zich decadent en benijdenswaardig

Seksuele onzekerheid en de drang om een triootje te doen om erbij te horen.

Ze waren bang dat ze tevreden waren omdat ze zich er op de een of andere wijze mee tevreden hadden gesteld

Het kon verlangen zijn of het verlangens naar verlangen

Socials als basis voor werk en feestjes, een essentieel deel van het leven

Dingen die ergens in de wereld gebeurd waren, dat wil zeggen California of New York

Thuis fermentation en geflambeerde bloemkool, IPAs en single origin koffies, dagmenu’s op leisteen

The Guardian en de New Yorker, de New York Times

Gentrificatie, een term die alleen maar bekend was bij mensen die het veroorzaakten

Een jasmijnthee of een venkel infusie

Die weemoed was een beetje hypocriet

Genmaicha en kombucha

De sauna van de Sohohouse

Van Lissabon naar Sicilie, op zoek naar het nieuwe Berlijn

Permanente ontevredenheid over het leven wat permanent vergeleken wordt met de timelines van klasgenoten

Fear of being replaced by AI

Longlist International Booker Prize 2025 ranking
Shortlisted books in bold
1 Under the Eye of the Big Bird - 4.5 stars rounded up, review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
2 On the Calculation of Volume I - 4.5 stars rounded down, review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
3 The Book of Disappearance - 4 stars, review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
4 Eurotrash - 4 stars, review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
5 Perfection - 3.5 stars rounded up, review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
6 A Leopard-Skin Hat - 3.5 stars rounded down, review here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
7 Reservoir Bitches - 3 stars, review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
8 Heart Lamp: Selected Stories - 3 stars, review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
9 Solenoid - 3 stars, review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
10 Hunchback - 3 stars, review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
11 On a Woman's Madness - 2.5 stars rounded up, review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
12 Small Boat - 2.5 stars rounded up, review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
13 There's a Monster Behind the Door - 2.5 stars rounded up, review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Helga · Rating 2 out of 5]

This non-story is about the ‘millennial archetypes’, Anna and Tom.
Let me elaborate. This book is about a couple, who have everything but are still dissatisfied because life wasn’t what they had imagined it would be: an idealized entity.
This book, despite being relatively short, was exhausting. If Anna and Tom were in front of me, I would have smacked their frustrated faces so much they would have looked like one of their over the top coffee makers at the end…or their precious counter-tops…or their emptiness despite having everything- a good life, good jobs, family and friends…

If you like to know what brands (the best) the two puppet-characters are wearing or what material (the best) is used in building their immaculate kitchen or read about their vacations (dissatisfying), then go ahead and read this book.

“Anna and Tom had grown up with the notion that individuality manifested itself as a set of visual differences, immediately decodable and in constant need of updating.”
Helga has grown up with the notion that it’s okay if what she planned for the future didn’t come off; that she should be thankful to be alive and full and even though she can’t afford to vacation in Italy or France and stay in high-end hotels, she can still enjoy a couple of days in Ehden.
And that’s what life is.

[Violeta · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is surprising that the term ‘digital nomads’ appears as late as page 97 of this 125-page novel. It is accompanied by the remark that Anna and Tom, the couple whose common life of 20 years we are following in these pages, had always been irritated when people applied it to them. After all, the expression didn’t even exist when they moved to Berlin in the beginning of the 00s. They are calling themselves ‘creative professionals’, a term even they found vague and jarring. They had come of age together with the internet, and in their 20s they left their southern European city for what promised to be a more fluid way of life in the alternative El Dorado that Berlin was at the start of the new millennium.

They belonged to the first generation of professionals that were able to work entirely online, anywhere in the world where the cafés had good Wi-Fi and decent lattes, and they were drunk on the freedom and abundance of choices the internet was giving them. Until then that mobility could be achieved only by the truly rich or the truly unconventional; they were neither. They were kids of a western middle class that, same as all the generations before them, were motivated by the prospect of a different life. Their knowhow in creating webpages for clients who were adapting their businesses to the new rules of commerce – that was their tool. They were the bohemians of the digital age. They could live anywhere, make use of the facilities of a globalized world, communicate via the social media, create their own networks of friends, people their age who shared a common language immediately decodable. It comprised not only of words but also, and above all, of images dictating ways to dress, eat, shop, party, decorate, relax, travel – in short, how to be in line with the times.

Interiors, their objects and décor, were crucial in maintaining a deluge of beauty and harmony, as advertised by the photos uploaded on the various platforms they used as their life’s storefront. Life in these images was zen-like and clear, an edited version of reality framed in such a way as to cut out a crucial part of the experience they were supposed to depict.

Current affairs and polemics sneaked in through their screens, in the form of yet more images, in the headlines of The Guardian or The NY Times, or in the long comment threads disputing the political correctness of this or that statement, making it difficult to decide where exactly one stood, each argument instantly generating a counter argument with equally enthusiastic followers tapping on their like-buttons.

They, and all their friends, belonged to an imprecise political left with a vague knowledge of the history that had shaped the landscape of the city they were living in. They felt the need to act upon their humanitarianism when the refugees flooded Berlin in 2015, only to discover that their skills and good intentions lacked a practical outlet in the real world, that the idea of a purposeful, yet insulated, life existed only in the bubble they had created for themselves. With that realization came also restlessness, a glimpse of flakiness and vanity within themselves and those around them. In the decade since their own arrival to the city gentrification had changed the scene, real estate prices had soared. Their brush with a more…real reality left them thinking that the solid life they had built for themselves was perhaps merely an accident of timing, that their identity was anchored not in their thoughts or deeds, but in something fickle and brittle, a roll of the dice. The ‘unique’, uploaded images of their life were turning out to be more homogenous than they had ever expected. The world was full of hardwood floors, succulent plants, stacks of Taschen books, Scandinavian armchairs, strings of wall-lights, enamel dishes, herringbone tweed blankets casually spread on low sofas.

They sublet their apartment and flee for Lisbon, then Sicily, searching for the next ‘original’ place, untainted by the internet. The irony of the internet being the medium that enables their search doesn’t elude them. Nowhere does reality respond to the images formed in their heads, something is always less than perfect. Perhaps they are only getting older and less enamored of their own life. Perhaps they are starting to suspect that the copiously edited images don’t justify the effort of maintaining the illusion of an ideal life.

Vincenzo Latronico comes up with the perfect ending for their story, ironically befitting and accommodating to the fantasies that have been shaping their generation - and influencing us all.

He does another thing, too: he puts these pioneers of the digital age on the cultural map. It seems to me that this can’t be done unless an author records and eventually turns into literature all that marks and makes a generation who they are. It’s what Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Hemingway, D.F. Wallace did, to name a few. I dare not say that Latronico is up there with them (yet), but I am saying that he’s a very talented writer and does an incredibly good job in narrating (with a cool head and a warm heart) a story of 21st century wanderlust. This book has been shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize, and I sincerely hope it wins.

P.S. The author himself acknowledges that “this novel came about as a tribute to Things by George Perec; anything good in it owes a lot to him.” He made me curious. On to read "Things", then, if only to juxtapose promises of happiness separated by half a century.

[Flo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Longlisted for International Booker Prize 2025 - People with good intentions can be shallow, and so is this book about them. I am afraid that by tomorrow, I may forget it.

[EveStar91 · Rating 3 out of 5]

The life promised by these images is clear and purposeful, uncomplicated. It is a life of coffees taken out on the east-facing balcony in the spring and summer while scrolling New York Times headlines and social media on a tablet. The plants are watered as part of a daily routine that also includes yoga and a breakfast featuring an assortment of seeds. There is work to be done at a laptop, of course, but at a pace more befitting an artist than an office worker: between intense bursts of concentration at a desk there might be a walk, a videocall with a friend who has an idea for a new project, some jokes exchanged on social media, a quick trip to the nearby farmers’ market.

Shotlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025.

Perfection follows creative professionals Anna and Tom as they strive for contentment in their lives, moving towards an ineffable depiction of creativity that is seen in their social media posts, but which seems just out of range in real life.

It wasn’t order they so desperately craved, but something deeper and more essential. They lived in a country whose language they didn’t speak, in a job with unclear boundaries and no fixed hours or base, and which was, to a great extent, subject to the whims of their clients and social media contacts.

The book is written as vignettes, following their lives from when they decided to live in Berlin - looking for that special excitement or freedom of exploration, as brief descriptions of decisions or episodes over the years until they move out again. This writing style allows the readers to acknowledge the dissatisfaction they felt, but also emphasizes the perspective of looking in at their lives from the outside - rooting for them to be happy in their exciting new lives, to enjoy their work instead of just the glamour of it, wishing they would form lasting friendships that goes beyond just visiting the latest art exhibition, or indeed even visiting the latest art exhibition for the sake of the new art rather than ticking off being seen there.

By “they,” Anna and Tom did not understand, or at least not explicitly, anyone who could be considered an expat, a term they tended to apply either ironically or judgmentally. And yet that term did apply to them, and in the frenzy of their mobilization and the meta-frenzy of their attempt to theorize that mobilization, no one was able to say why that abbreviation applied to some expatriates and not to others.

This discontent extends to even larger than life situations, like where they try to help refugees, volunteering their time to do anything they can but focusing on their insecurity when they find they can't do much, and spiraling to their perceived place in the still not-quite-their city. The excuse of not learning more than just phrases of the new language or not trying for everyday fluency has to grow weaker with every passing year.

Back in the day, looking at images like those and knowing how frustrated and unhappy they had been when they took them made them feel ashamed, deficient, as if the reality presented in the photos should somehow be capable of triumphing over how they really felt, and that their inability to enjoy such a desirable life revealed a flaw in their character.

The themes of discontent arising from social media representations and intellectual seclusion among acquaintances come through quite strongly in this novella, but what is even more apparent is their loss of motivation for their career growth after one minor setback (which didn't really end up affecting their finances after all), their hunger for new experiences only as performances; their disinterest of learning anything new, their disappointment with traveling when the accommodations aren't picture perfect, and their total lack of trying out any new hobbies.

🌟🌟1/2🌟
[Half a star for the premise and the whole book; 1/4 stars for the characters and their growth; Half a star for the story and themes; Half a star for the world-building and societal descriptions; 3/4 star for the writing and style - 2 1/2 stars in total.]

Luck—but it will not be luck exactly—will be on their side. Not luck exactly, but probably privilege, inherited wealth and the security it offers.

[Quirine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A true reality check that offers no answers but creates a whole lot of existential dread

[Daniel Shindler · Rating 4 out of 5]

While reading “Perfection” I was reminded of a conversation I once had with a millennial acquaintance. She was recalling the early stages of her relationship with her future husband.They met online at a dating site. After a few in person dates, she anxiously propositioned him. Despite great trepidation, she summoned all her courage and asked if they could post a picture together on Instagram.The answer was affirmative and marked a defining moment in their blossoming relationship. Together they would enhance their relationship and become social influencers and content creators, phrases that were unknown during my formative baby boomer years.Together they rode off into the virtual ether in a quest to create images unfettered by reality and the emotional vicissitudes of daily human interaction. In this way,the couple reminded me of AnnaandTom.

I have taken the liberty of joining Anna and Tom into a single verbal entity.They are young digital content creators who are expats, having relocated from an unspecified Southern European country to settle in Berlin.They move as a unit in a life driven by virtual imagery.They do not speak directly over the course of the novel.Instead, they are described by an omniscient third person narrator.The reader does not get direct access to their thoughts or emotions. They come to the page as a deracinated couple who function as a literary case study projecting a dry and impersonal visage while living in a technological bubble.

“ But polemics and current affairs were mere thunder and lightning in what was otherwise a deluge of beauty.On their screens—- everywhere, all the time—- acquaintances and old schoolmates and strangers from around the world would share all that was beautiful in their lives.The images followed no logical thread beyond their own splendor…”

AnnaandTom’s reality is generated from images created on a screen. However, the images and popular bon mots are fickle and short lived. Consequently, the couple finds themselves enmeshed in an ongoing cycle of recreating themselves, updating their images in a Sisyphean grasp for perfection.The novel follows their twenty plus year struggle for validation and definition.

On first reflection, the novel is a polemic centered on the encompassing and often insidious presence of social media in modern life. AnnaandTom seem to live an incomplete life, constantly searching and hungering for something more as they try to establish their brand.The global reach of social media has dislocated the couple from their original roots as well as their day to day expat environment, causing a never ending search for identity.

Search for identity is part of the human condition and common to all sentient beings.However, our couple seem to experience a type of virtual anomie that is a new result of the technological age. Because social media is pervasive, one must wonder how much of this anomie and dislocation has seeped into each of us who participate in social media.Do we seek public adulation or are we motivated by the satisfaction of communicating with others worldwide?

For me, the strength of this novel is contained in the questions it raises about the role of social media and internet use in modern life.We all must evaluate where we lie on the spectrum of balancing virtual involvement with day to day face to face engagement.As a Goodreads participant, I am comforted that I am reaching others through words and thoughts more so than fabricated images. Existing through branding and imaging can decrease literacy, causing a deterioration of critical thinking and analytic capacity.In our current geopolitical world, we are struggling with this loss of collective discernment. We are relatively new to the world of technological social engagement. The degree and method with which we collectively engage with the virtual world will be critical in determining the shape of our rapidly transforming environment.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5. A picture perfect rendering of a generation caught in a specific time and place.

Anna & Tom are millennials, living the creative freelancer life in Berlin before the explosion of that lifestyle. In some ways, they were lucky; they were one of the firsts to the scene in a Berlin still finding its way after the fall of the Wall, tapping into the untapped potential in this city teeming with abundance. From the outside—meaning, from social media—their lives are perfect: a plant filled and spacious apartment, weekends spent lounging or clubbing, and the occasional weekend getaway to a warmer climate. They care about the right social causes and they “step up” in 2015 during the migrant crisis, though their graphic design skills are of little help to the refugees.

Though the likes keep climbing and for all intents and purposes they are successful, they ache for more—though not overtly and not always consciously. Berlin begins to feel equally too much of the same and changing too fast. The grass begins to look greener and they kick themselves for not having thought sooner to make the move to Lisbon or some other burgeoning city as yet to be fully transformed by gentrification, that still has something “authentic” to offer.

Latronico has really captured something here. Readers of a certain age and with a certain predilection for aesthetics will find a lot to relate to and at least some part of their world being mirrored back at them, for better or for worse. We all know Anna & Tom, we know so many Annas & Toms, we are Annas & Toms. Fighting the urge to pick up my phone while reading about these characters’ inability to stop picking up their phone or check social media was quite the experience.

The writing is appropriately distanced, observing, as we are, this life from the outside and giving the book almost the feel of a case study. We don’t get inside Anna & Tom’s heads, we don’t get dialogue, the characters could just as well be nameless. We get to know them through the things they buy, the way they style their apartment, the types of cafes and breweries that they work at. We just sit back and watch in horror because we recognize every step they take in their search for fulfillment.

Some may say it's shallow or that we don't really get to know the characters well, but I would argue that that is the point.

A perfect little book that will make many feel very seen, and then perhaps a little disgusted with how seen they feel. The age old adage still stands—wherever you go, there you are.

[Hux · Rating 2 out of 5]

There was a British sitcom in 2005 called Nathan Barley, created by the brilliant Chris Morris, which focused on the emergence of the internet hipster, a clownish nightmare of performative cool in the face of ennui and pointlessness all while using modern parlance and consuming the newest, most pointless products whilst espousing safe opinions but packaging them as edgy. In his own words he was 'a self-facilitating media node.' This is what we have here, but in book form, only it uses a third person narration to colour the dead-behind-the-eyes lives of its expats protagonists, Tom and Anna, and forces their relationship to embody a more up-to-date version of this awful type of vacuous human. With added likes, subscribers, and boredom. 

Latronico laments (via this flimsy neo-liberal, Berlin based couple) the banal aspects of being bored, comfortable, and safe; of being middle-class people living in the West and engaging with all the right-on facilities, opinions, and technology. He hits all the obvious targets with accuracy and (necessary) venom, but it's nothing new and that's the problem with the book, all his targets are easy -- tediously so. They range from the monotonous lifestyle of eating avocado on toast, coffee shops, internet culture, social media, and the endless consumption of digestible left-wing opinions and branding which, under the slightest scrutiny, are bland and performative, possessing no real bite or consequence. These people give monthly donations to all the most righteous causes, read the approved of media and embrace the correct and most noble narratives (BLM, LGBT, etc). They like art but the kind which is demonstrably bad (and therefore annoys the uneducated yokels). They worry that they aren't doing anything interesting with their sex lives. They worry that they aren't vegan enough, environmentally conscientious enough, aren't in touch with the plight of the poor, the immigrants, the refugees, the oppressed. And so on.

If your idea of fun is tired social media (and all its ironic smugness) in book form then go nuts. And don't get me wrong, it is kinda fun to play along and acknowledge the tedium of this kind of western existence, the mundane and stale daily grind which inevitably manifests as a debilitating ennui. But the fundamental problem I had with the book (ignoring the the fact that his writing isn't fun to read) is that it lacks any meaningful authenticity. This polemic (because that's what it is) is wrapped up in the contrived narrative of a couple that aren't real, don't feel real, and serve no purpose other than to be cardboard placeholders, caricatures and punching bags, for his painfully clichéd diatribe. In that regard, this is a book that is very similar to something like 'Harassment Architecture' by Mike Ma but done with a greater literary flourish therefore making it more palatable to the chattering classes (his mimicry of Perec will also get them excited). But lets not kid ourselves, it's the same thing -- whining about the nightmare of modernity. In fact, I would say this is less original and more derivative. And the fact that Latronico's audience are the very bedwetters he is satirising makes it worse. Had this been written by someone from a council estate, or an immigrant (the kind which Tom and Anna romanticise), then it might have had more impact, and certainly would have been more insightful. But instead it's the bored middle-class analysing and satirising the bored middle-class. 

Putting the content to one side, the book's prose is not fun to read (at least not for me). As mentioned, it openly mimics Perec (not a good thing in my opinion but each to their own) and Latronico acknowledges the book as a kind of sequel to 'Things: A Story of The Sixties' and utilises a narrative style which uses past, present, and future tense in the narration creating a sense of (unpleasant) detachment and voyeurism. This only further distances the reader from his already unconvincing false creations, Tom and Anna, describing them as abstracts rather than people. He uses the word 'would' over and over again to describe his protagonist's experiences and views. 

"They would line up the glasses on the open shelves... they would go for walks on endless summer evenings... they would spend long weekends together... they would light candles... every once in a while, they would buy a toy... they would send an invoice and check Instagram... on Saturday they would sit down at the double desk... they would spend entire meals browsing Netflix recommendations... they would spend their mornings..." etc

This is obviously a deliberate choice and the final chapter (named Future) switches to 'will' to reiterate this past, present, and future presentation, but it's not fun to read and, again, only results in a feeling of being outside the character's lives, to such an extent that they don't feel like real people at all, only deformed props for Latronico to hang his aloof condescension on. More precisely he turns the couple into a facsimile of human beings who must endure the banality and boredom of a world he clearly finds distasteful. Sure, these people are vapid and empty (that's the point) but that doesn't mean his language needs to be. I struggled to find a paragraph that didn't bore me. Yes, Latronico knows he's one of them (so what) and hits his targets but given that they're fish, inside a barrel, that are already dead, it's not much of an accomplishment. And like I said, this has been done by others and done better. Nathan Barley is two decades old now after all. We get it. Late stage capitalism, blah blah blah, by-the-numbers liberalism, blah blah blah, postmodern ironic, blah blah blah, IKEA, Vegan oat milk, FaceBook, Latte, Twitter storm, Trans non-binary, gluten free biscuits, blah blah blah, ennui doesn't come from life being too hard, it comes from life being too easy, blah blah blah. We get it. We're all bored now and life is shit and the only thing that makes us feel better about any of it is having enough self-awareness to know and point at it (and buying shiny things from Amazon).

No one is more thrilled than me that middle-class people hate themselves but none of that changes the fact that the book isn't very original or very good

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

The people in Perfection are people I know. It’s not true that they’re in Berlin: I met them in Montreal.

Or was it Budapest?

Or was it… Amsterdam?

It’s getting hard to pinpoint: they used to move a lot, these people, and that was a while back already. I hear they finally had kids and are out of the city, nowadays. One of them accepted a corporate job, eventually. Remote, of course.

But you know them too. They’re these kids who grew up with personal computers in one form or another, and never were really fazed with technology. Maybe they used to fix your VCR — which wasn’t actually broken, you know. They were the first to adopt reality TV, the first to massively use Facebook, then Instagram. The first to properly divert phones from their original use, one day, moving towards ditching the latter almost altogether.

Or maybe in Perfection they’re a touch younger than this, but not by much, and generations seemed to overlap a smidge, for a while.

For a while you didn’t see them quite as much as you used to, either: they kept renting Airbnbs everywhere, happily reporting from afar that they were able to code and make money from this place or that, wearing the concept like a badge of honour. “Guess where I’m working from today?” (A café. A balcony. A park.) “Guess where I am now?” (Senegal. Chile. California.) “Guess what my new contract is?” (A wireframe. A translation. A shopping cart.)

There’s nothing so exotic about them. You know coders and creatives too, right? If you’ve known them for a few decades, the story of their younger days is nicely told in here.

It’s not a warm narrative, but it’s not derogatory either, nor flat. It is what it is at a time when people started owning less and less whatever they were buying, and image was becoming everything to make up for it. Things were faster. Communications cheaper. Travel easier. Freedom seemed within reach, at least on some level. L’Auberge espagnole was an inspirational movie, a point of comparison, or a regret already. Food and drinks literacy was about to explode. Houseplants would explode in turn. Your Tamagotchi had died at the bottom of a drawer, long before. There truly was nothing on TV anymore. What if one day you bought hens and goats, and managed to live off the grid? (Good luck, you delusional urbanite. But you will perfect the art of rustic yet refined visuals as you aim for something like it. You’ll strive to capture the authenticity of wood grain and heirloom everything in your living environment, not unsuccessfully; reinvent pottery, bicycling, music, fashion, tea; practice yoga, hot preferably; pay too much for almost every restaurant meal you truly enjoy, and every coffee you drink; and, try to save the environment anew, in the meantime.)

Is it ostentatious consumption that’s featured in Perfection? Maybe. But the kids didn’t invent that part: it’s just the tools that changed, setting new standards. And life went on, and age crept on, and disillusionment settled in one day, and everyone knows that part of the story so well that the book doesn’t even bother explaining it compared to the rest. But for a while — for a hundred pages or so — youth shines bright in Perfection, and therein lies the fascination. Some things never do change, do they?

[Paula Mota · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Ninguém sabe aonde os teria levado o livre desenvolvimento das suas inclinações para a indolência. Mais uma vez, a história tinha escolhido por eles. Teriam sem dúvida gostado, como toda a gente, de se consagrar a alguma coisa, de sentir neles uma necessidade poderosa, a que teriam chamado vocação, uma ambição que os teria elevado, uma paixão que os teria preenchido. Infelizmente, só conheciam uma: a de maior bem-estar, e esta esgotava-os.”
- As Coisas -

Segundo diz o autor nos agradecimentos, “As Perfeições” é uma homenagem a “As Coisas” de Georges Perec, que li previamente para perceber até onde se estende a comparação. O livro segue os mesmos moldes, o do olhar de uma espécie de antropologista sobre a sua geração, simbolizada por um casal, Tom e Anna, a que se refere sempre como um todo, sem individualidade nem personalidade.

It was a life that they had created for themselves, building difference upon difference until it encapsulated the real them, with a freedom they would never had back home. They were proud of it. On the other side of the window the city pulsed on, calling them with promises they were in no rush to put to the test.

Em “As Perfeições” examinamos, portanto, dois bebés chorões… perdão, dois millenials italianos imigrantes… perdão, expats (não confundir com os outros que chegam a salto) em Berlim. Aí a vida nocturna é espectacular, a droga é boa, o sexo é assim-assim, está um briol que não se aguenta mas as casas, onde trabalham como freelancers, são quentinhas e têm uma Internet de truz. Como são nómadas digitais, quando o tédio aperta, decidem passar uma temporada em Lisboa por altura da Web Summit. Aí, a comida é péssima, não há aquecimento no hotel e os cobertores picam, a Internet é manhosa, só lhes resta beber Sagres nas esplanadas de Lisboa com vista para o mar (ainda me estou a rir) e ir ao cinema, mas, caramba os filmes são dobrados (ainda não me recompus). Está mesmo muito frio na Lisboa dos jacarandás azuis (sem comentários) no Outono e o alojamento é surpreendentemente caro (agradeçam a vocês mesmos e a outros como vocês), como tal, só lhes resta ir para o calor da Sicília, onde está tudo pela hora da morte, não arranjam um apartamento com vista para o mar, as vilas piscatórias não têm pescadores, a Internet é um pavor, há potenciais meliantes em cada esquina, têm uma dieta com demasiados hidratos de carbono e não se sentem bem-vindos (já disse que os protagonistas são italianos?). É decerto uma conspiração mundial contra estes dois. Ao contrário de Perec, que parecia querer compreender o seu casal, Latronico não poupou Anna e Tom, fazendo-os parecer uns meninos mimados, uns hipsters de cabeça oca eternamente insatisfeitos, preocupados com as últimas tendências de cozinha e decoração (sempre houve plantas de interior, desde quando é isso um statement?), tudo o que possa compor a fotografia perfeita nas redes sociais.

Beauty and pleasure seem as inextricable from daily life as particles suspended in a liquid.

Sempre ouvi dizer que se deve escrever sobre o que se sabe, mas parece-me igualmente ajuizado tratar de saber sobre o que se escreve. Duvido que Vincenzo Latronico, que me parece um homem tão mundano, alguma vez tenha posto os pés em Lisboa, ou se pôs foi num fim de semana movido a TukTuk, complementado com uma pesquisa básica na Internet ou por passa-palavra de pessoas tão viajadas como ele. Diz ele, por exemplo, que o centro histórico tem vista para o mar e, numa saída nocturna, tentam ir a uma festa num prédio à beira-mar, a uns passos do hotel deles, no Bairro Alto, onde as janelas do seu quarto de submundo são violentamente açoitadas pelos ventos oceânicos, mas se sente um odor a maresia e casca de eucalipto. Aquilo a que os lisboetas que não têm as narinas todas queimadinhas da coca suspeitam ser uma mistura de gases de tubo de escape com urina requentada, aposto.

In practice, their social commitment amounted to using Uber only if it was snowing and always living tips in cash. They didn’t eat tuna.

Recorrendo aos mesmos tempos verbais que Perec na obra mencionada, “As Imperfeições” pinta um retrato desapaixonado de uma geração 60 anos depois, que me trouxe exactamente o mesmo vazio e enfado, mas enquanto “As Coisas” beneficia da distância temporal, com a nostalgia de uma época relativamente distante, o livro de Latronico está demasiado próximo do actual zeitgeist para suscitar curiosidade. É como nos vermos ao espelho e, por isso, talvez faça mais sentido daqui a 60 anos. Ou 20, à velocidade a que as coisas mudam.

‘It’s all completely perfect’, the story will say. ‘It’s just like it is in the pictures’.

[Claire Reads Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think millennials can stop writing fiction now

[Laura Gotti · Rating 3 out of 5]

E mezzo.
Bello questo ritratto di una generazione che non è la mia ma che conosco molto bene. Vivono a Berlino (o a Amsterdam o, ormai più raramente, a Londra). Hanno case da Ig piene di piante che non si ricordano di annaffiare e di gatti che poi non sanno a chi piazzare quando vanno in vacanza. Hanno una rete di amici e serate e inaugurazioni di mostre e librerie e car sharing e lavoro ma solo di una certo genere. Poi gli anni passano.

Mi è piaciuto il raccontare di Latronico, il suo prosare, il suo sguardo disincantato sui suoi coetanei e su Berlino, ma non solo. Un romanzo breve, poco più di un racconto, ma che racchiude un mondo su cui è stato molto interessante gettare uno sguardo.

[casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

blewww through this i loved the writing style!!!! anyone think that maybe globalization was a mistake? i love lady gaga. i think she’s a really interesting artist.

[Barbara K · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m thinking back to what seemed like decades ago, although it was probably only 10 years. Waiting in line in Starbucks one day I found myself furious at a display bearing the description “These snack bar choices have been carefully curated for your pleasure.” What could that possibly mean? My tolerance for the omnipresence of the word “curated” had finally been exhausted. I snapped a picture of the display and posted it with some snarky comment on the dilution of meaning in the English language.

Clearly I have little tolerance for chasing trends. Although I’m hardly a technophobe, I’ve never been an early adopter of advancements. I need to be convinced that they would have benefit for me, because I’m not unhappy with what I have now. (Sometimes circumstances intervene, such as when I dropped my BlackBerry and then drove over it. Hello, smartphone.)

Yes, I did have a FB account back then, and I will admit to occasionally drooling over vacation photos posted by friends. But I always assumed that what I was seeing was the tip of the iceberg. People’s lives were more than just those images, and that other part may have been much worse than my life.

All of which is to say that the world as perceived by Tom and Anna, the only characters in this book, is one that is alien to me. The couple are graphic designers who in the early 2010’s migrate from an unnamed city in southern Europe to Berlin, capital of all that is hip at the time. Their lives are structured around their carefully curated (grr…) apartment and experiences that represent, to them, the cutting edge of culture. They convince themselves that they have achieved happiness through their design work and their life in this best of all possible worlds.

Except that things change. Berlin takes on a new vibe as more Americans and their damned dollars move in. The friends they made so easily move out, back to their home cities. Life becomes stale for Tom and Anna, with the options for growth on any level having become limited.

There is a brief interlude in the book when the real world inserts itself into theirs, as Syrian refugees flow into Berlin. Tom and Anna make what turn out to be ineffectual efforts to help, but their graphic design backgrounds and less-than-perfect German language skills have poorly equipped them to do anything meaningful. They struggle to understand whether their efforts were a genuine desire to help, or to be part of a movement that helped.

The couple try to recapture the joy they felt when first in Berlin by temporarily relocating to Lisbon and then Sardinia, but the reality of those places is only dimly related to the online images they absorbed before leaving. Eventually they return to Berlin, where fate steps in and sends them on a quite different life path.

The book is short and structurally interesting. The opening is particularly well done, as images of their apartment taken for potential sublettors are contrasted with the day to day reality.

We are kept at a distance from Tom and Anna; Latronica does not want us to feel any genuine connection to them. They are, in essence, symbols for a subset of millennials seeking something but not knowing exactly what that is. Fortunately for Tom and Anna, their skills allow them some financial independence to navigate these confusing feelings. I’ve known millennials who are similarly afflicted, although they seem to end up in dead end jobs and spend their days with video games.

The bottom line is that I had trouble connecting with these characters or their dilemma. This book may be set in the 2010’s, but a similar story could be set in any decade of the post-industrial era. (Latronico’s epigraph is by Georges Perec, who wrote another version of this tale set in 1960’s Paris.). Unless I have completely missed some key element, the evolution of Tom and Anna’s story seemed self-evident, which limited its interest for me.

The book ends in 2019, an interesting choice by Latronico since it was published within the past year. How would Tom and Anna have coped with the pandemic?

[SCARABOOKS · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vita di due giovani web-creativi innamorati (stranamente, un ragazzo e una ragazza), a Berlino (e qui si torna alla normalità: se non a Berlino, dove?). In omaggio a Le cose di Perec, descrizione iper-analitica di casa (con perfezioni e imperfezioni), sesso (come con la casa), città (idem come sopra), lavoro (molto e solo smart), cucina (immancabile la passione per “l’impiattamento” e preliminari), pensieri (“un paesaggio interiore dissestato da vent’anni di internet”: diciamo confusi, ecco). Un capitoletto di impegno compassionevole (l’impegno politico, si sa, è diventato impossibile, anche a Berlino). Un paio di puntatine veloci a Lisbona e in Sicilia (finiscono per annoiarsi anche là). Piccolo colpo di scena finale. La cosa che mi ha colpito di più? Mai che leggessero un libro, neanche in formato elettronico piratato, neanche americano sul managerialismo (che per me è il ground zero della lettura).

Non ho capito bene se il romanzo è così ben scritto e centra così bene il problema (il loro, reale e interessante, ma sarebbe lungo parlarne seriamente) da portare il lettore (che sarei io) ad oscillare tra depressione e irritazione perché loro sono deprimenti e irritanti. Oppure se è proprio il romanzo che fa questo effetto a pendolo. Il dubbio resta, ma comunque l’effetto quello è. Fortuna che è brevissimo.
E non aiuta a dissiparlo (il dubbio, dico), il tono narrativo (peraltro, gradevole) che sembra prendere tutto talmente sul serio (piante, pub, leccate, videate, tiramenti mentali) che non capisci se è empatico o raffinatamente ironico (insomma, li commisera, li descrive con distacco o sottosotto li percula?).
Confesso che certe frasi mi sono rimaste sospese in testa come UFO (oggetti non identificati), però un loro effetto lo fanno (come gli UFO, appunto). Tanto per riportarne una: “La città saliva e scendeva come una marea”: “c’avrá voluto dì?” (come diceva la Simona Marchini a Black Out). Che poi è la considerazione che potrei estendere a tutto il romanzo. Però trestelle perché lo dice bene e perché il problema esiste (il loro, dico).

[ra · Rating 1 out of 5]

okay .... this is what happens when you only read mark fisher and think about yourself too much .. woke up this morning thinking about this book for some reason, knowing full well it was going to irritate me beyond belief so that is MY BAD but this is really a perfect example of why i don't read much contemporary literature anymore. constant stream of oh feel bad for me because i feel bad about everything and i use my phone too much don't you want to know why my phone makes me feel bad? and then i say no because i have a phone and i know it makes me feel bad so i don't use the stuff that makes me feel bad and try to do things that make me feel good instead. and then the book is like oh but i can't stop using my phone my life will END! .. like why is that my problem. anyway this book made me think about that lydia davis quote about how you shouldn't read too much contemporary work because you already belong to your time and that is the nicest thing i can say about this

[Ρένα Λούνα · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ο Latronico έχει αναφέρει πως εμπνέεται από το (μαγικό) μεταμοντέρνο πρότυπο του Perec, που συνθέτει την κοινωνία μέσω της σχέσης της με τα πράγματα και τον χώρο. Έχω πει και γράψει πολλές φορές πόσο μεγάλη έμπνευση είναι για εμένα ο Perec. Μάλιστα, όταν διάβασα το «Ζωή, οδηγίες χρήσεως», την πρώτη βδομάδα του Αυγούστου το 2021, σε μια προβλήτα φτιαγμένη από πέτρες Καρύστου δίπλα από την Πορτάρα της Νάξου, μου έγινε σαφές πως ο Perec είχε δώσει την άδεια στους απανταχού ανθρώπους που γράφουν, πως επιτρέπεται να γράφεις έτσι – κανείς δεν θα έρθει να σου βάλει φωτιά στο λάπτοπ. Πάντοτε πάλευα με τη γοητεία που μου ασκούσαν οι λίστες και οι λεπτομέρειες, τόσο ως θησαυροφυλάκιο αναμνήσεων, αλλά και ως ιδιοφυής λογοτεχνική κατασκευή ανάμεσα στη γεφύρωση και την απώθηση. Οι λεπτομέρειες είναι αυτές που θα προδώσουν εάν κάποιος λέει ψέματα ή όχι. Είναι συγκεκριμένες και υπερβολικές, είναι η αρχή κάθε καλού χτισίματος, είναι και η απογείωση της ομορφιάς.

Με σημείο εκκίνησης την ιδέα της επιδίωξης ενός lifestyle καταναλωτικής ικανοποίησης, όπου η κατοχή ορίζει την ύπαρξη, ο 40χρονος Latronico στρέφει το μαχαίρι προς τον εαυτό και τη γενιά μας, όπου τα «πράγματα» δεν είναι μόνο είδη επίπλωσης ή ηλεκτρικές συσκευές∙ είναι εικόνες, στιγμές και η αποτύπωση των ταξιδιών στα social media μέσα από τη γνωστή ψηφιακή κουλτούρα που ενώ καταλήγει πανομοιότυπη με του διπλανού, καθορίζει την αυθεντικότητα, όπως η γενιά μας την έχει κατασκευάσει.

Η ομοιότητα με τον Perec έγκειται στον αφαιρετικό, ανά στιγμές «κλινικό» τρόπο γραφής, όπου απουσιάζουν οι εσωτερικοί μονόλογοι και κυριαρχεί η λεπτομερής εξωτερική παρατήρηση. Όμως ο Latronico δεν κρατιέται και δίνει κάποια ζωή σε αυτό το στυλ: πίσω από την ψυχρή καταγραφή, εντοπίζεται ένας ήπιος σαρκασμός σε προσεκτικές δόσεις που πληγώνει όσους πάμε και διαβάζουμε σε χιπστερ καφέ, θα θέλαμε συνδρομές σε περιοδικά που δεν θα προλάβουμε να διαβάσουμε, έχουμε κλείσει Βερολίνο τον Ιούλιο και βασανιζόμαστε με δυσανεξίες που οι εργατοώρες μας έχουν εφεύρει και ανακατέψει ανάμεσα στο φαντασιακό και στο φαντασιακού του στομαχιού μας.

Ενώ ο Perec εγκαταλείπει τον νεωτερικό κόσμο υπέρ ενός κονστρουκτιβιστικού βλέμματος (ως μέλος της Oulipo συμφωνεί πως η λογοτεχνία οφείλει να αυτοπεριορίζεται με κανόνες, φόρμες και παιχνίδια-καρδούλα μεγάλη- και από αυτούς τους υποτιθέμενα εξαναγκαστικούς περιορισμούς γεννιέται νέο νόημα, γράφοντας για να κατασκευάσει, σαν εργαλείο μηχανικής κι όχι ρομαντικής εξομολόγησης, ως μοντάζ κι όχι ως ψυχογράφημα, ως φόρμα κι όχι για συγκίνηση– για αυτό και ο έρωτας μέσα από καταγραφές είναι τόσο επίπονος), ο Latronico καταθέτει πως η «Τελειότητα» σήμερα δεν είναι απλά ζήτημα υλικής κατάστασης, αλλά ψηφιακής παρουσίας, που θέτει την ουσία ως θυσία στην αρένα του θεάματος ή ακόμα χειρότερα, η ουσία γίνεται κάτι μιμητικό και η κοινωνική σύνδεση ακολουθεί τα καθρεφτίσματα του καιρού της.

Η σύγκριση με τον Perec είναι απόλυτα θεμιτή, ωστόσο μου θύμισε ανά σημεία και το «Πρωτόλειο» του Martin Andrew εντός της αυτο-αναφορικότητας και της μεταειρωνείας της γενιάς μας. Η αυτο-ανάλυσης της εποχής και η πλάγια ειρωνεία στη φαινομενική υπερβολή καταλήγουν εργαλείο ειλικρίνειας. Και ο Latronico όσο κι ο Andrew δεν σατιρίζουν έξυπνα για τον σύγχρονο τρόπο ζωής όπως κάνουν για παράδειγμα οι φοβεροί Sedaris και Keret, αλλά επιχειρούν να κοιτάξουν τον εαυτό τους ανάποδα – έτσι ακτινογραφούν τις αγωνίες της γενιάς μας.

Ο Latronico, λοιπόν, χτίζει το σκηνικό που υποτίθεται πως καθρεφτίζει το περιεχόμενο του μυαλού εντός ενός καπιταλιστικού κόσμου: Το “τέλειο” διαμέρισμα με τα δανέζικα έπιπλα ως κάστρο μιας επιλεκτικής πόζας σαν σκηνογραφία που προσποιείται ότι λέει κάτι ουσιώδες για τον ένοικο, όπως και τα χίπστερ καφέ, οι μοντέρνοι χώροι εργασίας, οι εκθέσεις, τα events: κάθε χώρος δηλώνει έναν τρόπο ζωής και την επιμονή στο ανθρώπινο «δίκτυο» που ψυχαναγκαστικά έρχεται με ένα βαρύ φόντο αισθητικής, κάπως γιορτινό και δήθεν αβίαστο, που στο τέλος μάς φέρει αντιμέτωπους με συμπτώματα άγχους ενώ μυρίζουμε τη λεβάντα που καλοπροαίρετα δεν μπορεί να λείπει από κάθε χώρο που θέλει να φαντάζει «προσεγμένος» και «φροντιστικός», ό,τι κι εάν αυτό σημαίνει. Σημαίνει άξιος να φωτογραφηθεί.

Ο Latronico κατασκευάζει το «μουσειακό» του σύμπαν ως ένα μεγάλο οικοσύστημα όπου τα αντικείμενα έχουν συναισθηματικό ρόλο που ενώ ο αναγνώστης δεν τον ξέρει, τον υποψιάζεται, όπως συχνά και ο κάτοχός τους. Ταυτόχρονα, ο αναγνώστης οφείλει να μείνει και μακριά από τη ζωή του ζευγαριού, παρατηρώντας τον ελεγχόμενο, καλοσκηνοθετημένο, χωρίς απρόβλεπτες εκρήξεις ή αγριότητα κόσμο, σαν μυθιστόρημα της Paula Fox που έμεινε στη μέση. Άλλωστε, ένα μουσείο έχει τις προδιαγραφές του: πλαστική μεμβράνη, ταμπελάκια, αποστειρωμένο φως – και δε σε αφήνει να αγγίξεις το έκθεμα. Ο Latronico ψιθυρίζει πίσω από τις ατελείωτες περιγραφές: Ποιος δεν σε αφήνει να αγγίξεις το έκθεμα;

[Paolo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Prima lettura del 2024, su sollecitazione del vulcanico bookclub portoburci (a proposito se qualcuno è della zona può unirsi quando vuole).
Praticamente un saggio sociologico camuffato da romanzo breve su due nativi digitali della prima ora che riescono a cavalcare l'onda di internet e socialmedia, sino a fare del cazzeggio un lavoro e viverci pure e per di più a Berlino. Praticamente il sogno di ognuno.
Senonchè i nostri due protagonisti, che nonostante siano gli unici personaggi, minuziosamente descritti nelle loro abitudini, gusti, preferenze sessuali, non hanno alcuna consistenza e sono piuttosto due avatar sovrapponibili a qualsiasi individuo appartenente a quella generazione e con quel vissuto.
Il pamphlet alla fine ci mostra come anche vivere nella comunità di artisti visuali, web designer & co nella stimolante Berlino, si ammanti abbastanza rapidamente di tristezza, resa evidente dalla distanza tra la realtà e l'immagine che si deve dare di sé sulle reti sociali, specie di mostro onnivoro che tutto fagocita, assimila ed appiattisce.
Gli impiattamenti meglio riusciti venivano fotografati, taggati, condivisi. Le immagini attraversavano il pianeta.......arrivavano sugli schermi dei loro coetanei a Lione, ea Helsinki e a Valencia, che le osservano rapidamente........Poi premevano una combinazione di tasti impressa nella loro memoria muscolare e tornavano a lavorare.......un uovo diventava più famoso del Papa. Un virus contagioso devastava l'Africa occidentale. Un miliardario si rovesciava un secchio di ghiaccio sulla testa. Un marchio di moda sfruttava le tessitrici dell'est asiatico. Una ragazza registrava tutte le volte che la fischiavano in strada. Due afroamericani venivano uccisi dalla polizia. Un uomo filmava primi baci. Un aereo spariva sulla rotta per Pechino. Una donna era bella. Una casa piena di piante era bella. Una quiche vegana era bella. Un bambino aveva bisogno di soldi per la chemio. Il tempo spariva. pag. 68
Scrittura scorrevole, incisiva la resa delle immagini, solido l'argomentare. Resta il rammarico che si tratti poco più di uno spunto: l'entomologo sembra avere maggior simpatia per l'insetto a cui toglie le zampe per studiarlo, di quanta Latronico ne dimostri per Anna e Tom, tanto sono descritti come piatti ed inerti.
Sarebbero 2 * e mezzo, ma è comunque lettura istruttiva per chi ha figli di quella fascia di età (è il mio caso), con lunghe o definitive esperienze da espatriati (è sempre il mio caso).

Declassamento dopo aver visto quello che ha scritto nella quarta di copertina de "La parte sbagliata" di D. Coppo.

[Kate O'Shea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed this short novel which, I learn at the end, is a form of homage to "Things: A Story of the Sixties" by Georges Perec (so another to add to the list).

Perfection is the story of Anna and Tom who we meet as twenty-somethings newly arrived in Berlin. They are a new breed of workers who deal with digital content. It means their work space and time is fluid. They are in the rapidly evolving city at the height of change. And everyone around them mirrors their own. Buy nothing stays the same and Anna and Tom must adapt as they age even if the city they fell in love with in their twenties does not.

Perfection is a deceptively simple story but it's possible to recognise something of ourselves in them - wanting to stay young but recognising it is impossible.

It's a really good read and even though I've still no idea what their job really was I could empathise with the characters.

Highly recommended.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Fitzcarraldo for the advance review copy. Much appreciated.

[Federica Di Gaetano · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ho odiato ogni secondo.

[Baz · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

Perfection’s a dispassionate social realist novel that looks at existence in a digital world and its effects on the lives of a consumerist society of people who grew up at the same time the internet’s uses were being shaped and social media was born.

I’ve been desiring this as subject matter in contemporary fiction for a long time, and I’m grateful for this book. Latronico skewers a generation of people—his and mine. He writes clearly and economically about people’s quests for “difference”, for a life of happiness and freedom—freedom that comes from a feeling of abundance. People whose lives are defined and driven by images and trends.

But I didn’t love the novel’s form. Tom and Anna didn’t feel like characters. They felt like samples. They felt like Exhibit A and Exhibit B. Latronico writes about them as a duo. He doesn’t write about Anna and Tom, he writes about “them” as a unit, and “they” also represent their generation. They’re symbols, not characters. Latronico said he tried for years to write about “the intersection between our physical lives and our digital lives – how the two shape each other and our inner horizon”, but struggled to find a way. He explained: “there is something about the way time spent online vanishes, about the simultaneity of it all, that seemed to resist any linear plot.” But then he read a Perec novel and it gave him the key to his story.

The whole thing is written in description, and reads like a report, or a summary. He writes about Anna and Tom—and their generation—clinically. His voice is flat and distant. It is not compassionate. It’ll make for a valuable historical document.

Ultimately, I was held at arm’s length by its form and couldn’t love it. But more importantly, there was nothing in it that surprised me, or dealt me a blow. Nevertheless, it’s sharply written, it’s smart, astute, and I appreciated and admired it.

✷ ✷ ✷

27 July 2025. Have continued to reflect as I read more people’s enjoyment of this book. (And sorry if some of this goes over what I wrote initially, above):

I’m someone who admired Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, without really digging it. I like that it exists. I wanted someone—and want writers—to write about what Latronico did in the novel.

A lot of readers really liked and loved it. And one of the common reasons is that they felt seen. They say exactly that about their experience.

It made me think: I like that feeling of being seen too, and I had it with Perfection—so what happened in my experience with it?

I think the thing was that while being seen, I wasn’t told anything I didn’t already know. After the gladness, and pleasure of recognition, that came early in the book, I realised I wasn’t being surprised. It wasn’t interesting to be seen, in the case of Perfection. Latronico did the work of a scientist: he observed and reported. He didn’t do much of the work—in my experience—I love even more than that, of wondering about what he saw and complicating what he saw. I didn’t read or sense any questions.

I regularly go back to a bit in a piece by Tokarczuk in which she talks about two major qualities in fiction that she finds “particularly astonishing and moving”: one of them is open-endedness. And I can sum up the reason for my average experience with Perfection thus: I don’t think it has the quality of open-endedness.