Verdigris by  Michele Mari

Verdigris

Michele Mari

Monstrous and beguiling, tender and humorous, this is the story of an unlikely friendship between an older man suffering a decline of memory and a young boy growing into adulthood. As Felice unravels, Michelino draws the threads of his life together and the old man’s madness begins to become a dark reality.

Extract

Bisected by a precise blow of the spade, the slug writhed a moment longer: then it moved no more. All its glittering viscosity was left in its wake, for the split instead revealed a dry and compact surface, whose purplish- brown hue made it resemble the sliced end of a miniature bresaola. So, the animal needed to rid itself continuously of its slimy shame in order to maintain an inner purity, and fruit of this noble punishment was the metamorphosis of that foul ejection into splendidly iridescent shards. 

Parallels
  • Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey
  • Last Comes the Raven by Italo Calvino