Infinite Summer

May 8, 2017
Italian writer and politician Nesi introduces readers to the Italy of the 1970s, decades years after the economic downfall of WWII, when a rebounding country is bright and hopeful again. Drawing on his real-life experiences in the textile industry, Nesi charts the growth of this new Italy through the founding of a grand textile company. Ivo Barrocciai, the son of a blanket merchant, is one of the brave new youth who view the newly connected and recovering Europe as an opportunity to be seized. By closing down his father’s humble blanket factory, Ivo plans to open the largest textile factory that their town has ever seen. The factory and its construction gathers a generation of men who came of age in the tumultuous era after the war and exhibit the traits it took to survive in such unsure times. The novel is mainly a love letter to Italy, but also a celebration of the traditional masculinity of that era. Few women in the novel are fleshed out into full characters; many serve only as testaments to the virility of the male leads and become, much like their cars and clothing, status objects for the men who can claim them. The end result is a testosterone-fueled tale of triumph in a changing world.

May 15, 2017
Three young men set out to establish a textile firm in Florence, Italy.It's the 1970s, and the Italian economy is booming. Ivo Barrocciai, whose father has long run a small but well-established textile company, dreams of setting out on his own: establishing his own factory, modernizing, wildly expanding. Failure doesn't seem possible. "Wasn't it a miracle that anyone could try his hand at opening a business?" another character wonders in Nesi's (Story of My People, 2014) new novel. Ivo decides to build a massive factory and, to do so, acquires two partners, of sorts: Cesare Vezzosi, a scatterbrained, philandering tennis prodigy; and Pasquale Citarella, a simple, hardworking painter who blushes easily and has never had a bank account. The novel traces their business journey, along with several underlying threads: as Cesare pursues a mistress, Ivo pursues Cesare's wife, and Cesare's son pursues a classmate. Pasquale, meanwhile, tries to keep the business on track. Unfortunately, all these narrative threads fail to add up to anything. Ivo and Cesare are selfish, unsympathetic characters, and Nesi is so condescending in his treatment of Pasquale that those pages are difficult to get through. Nor are the joys and wonders of capitalism, the underlying theme of the novel, entirely convincing. And though we're told, many times, that Ivo's new factory is beautiful, very beautiful, incredibly beautiful, we never get any more specific details. A bubbling but empty-headed tribute to manufacturing, production, and the wonders of capitalism.

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