The Break by Pietro Grossi

The Break

Pietro Grossi

Dino's life is obsessed with billiards and his job as a Council road mender. But everything changes when his wife becomes pregnant and he needs more money. Dino's relationships and conversations with his work colleagues (one of whom may be a terrorist) are completely convincing. The writing is sparse and masculine but this suits the characters and the story. An unusual and entertaining novel - but don't expect a happy ending.

Extract
Dino didn't really know where to go, or even how to go back to his friends, who were still laying those round pieces of stone that had started to look more like corpses. That was how Dino saw himself and his workmates - now grave-diggers dressed in black, moving like automata, throwing down corpses of stone, pale and tired and travelling along an avenue that led to darkness. That day everything ended in darkness, in that filthy, sticky black sludge ...
Parallels
  • A Palace in the Old Village by Tahar Ben Jelloun
  • Fists by Pietro Grossi