Pietro and Teresa’s love affair is tempestuous and passionate. After yet another terrible argument, she gets an idea: they should tell each other something they’ve never told another person, something they’re too ashamed to tell anyone. In this way, Teresa thinks, they will remain intimately connected forever.

A few days after sharing their shameful secrets, they break up. Not long after, Pietro meets Nadia, falls in love, and proposes. But the shadow of the secret he confessed to Teresa haunts him, and Teresa herself periodically reappears, standing at the crossroads of every major moment in his life. Or is it he who seeks her out?

I struggled to get through this one - the narrator is a teacher having an affair with a student, and regularly has affairs with significantly younger woman throughout the narrative. Uncomfortable and the plot never holds him accountable for this.

Not for me, this one. I found it none of the things many other reviewers have seen in it and it failed to engage me. The principal character is a misogynistic self-absorbed needy man who shows no understanding of or empathy for the women in his life. Far from an exploration of relationships, love and dependency, I found it a tedious self-indulgent and tedious novel about not very much at all.

I’m a big fan of this book and will be looking out for more from this author!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me access an advance copy of this book in exchange for my feedback.

Lately, literary translators have been speaking up in the media about the need to have their work recognised, alongside that of the authors whose works they translate. The importance of the translator as the conveyor, in another language, of the original author’s thoughts, and the enormity of the creative effort involved in this exercise, is so obvious that it is surprising that there is any need to debate this matter at all. At the end of Europa Editions’ edition of Domenico Starnone’s Confidenza – “Trust” – its translator Jhumpa Lahiri provides an eye-opening afterword about her experience of the translation process, both with regard to this particular novel and more generally.

Lahiri’s relationship with Italian is interesting in itself. She was already an acclaimed writer in English – a Pulitzer winner, no less – when she moved to Rome in 2012. She has since written Dove mi trovo, her first novel in Italian, the language which she “has come to love most”, and translated another two Starnone novels – Ties and Trick – from Italian into English. The afterword reveals her alertness to the nuances of both languages and the choices she faced as a translator, including the central one – how to convey the novel’s title. Lahiri explains why she opted for Trust even though, as she admits, Confidenza has slightly different connotations – “the idea of a secret exchange, as opposed to the English sense of trust in one’s abilities, or certitude”.

Indeed, a “secret exchange” lies at the heart of this novel. From the very first pages we are immediately plunged into the narrative - Pietro Vella, the novel’s protagonist, embarks on a tempestuous affair with a bright and ebullient ex-student of his, Teresa Quadraro. Their love blows hot and cold, and in a strange bid to place their relationship on a more solid ground, Pietro and Teresa exchange each other’s worst secret. Such a shameful confidenza can only bind them closer together. Or so they think – only to break up a couple of days later.

This secret exchange is a McGuffin and – with apologies if this counts a spoiler of sorts – just don’t read this novel if your only incentive is a prurient curiosity or the expectation of a ground-shattering revelation. The confidenza of the title however serves as the link between Pietro and Teresa over both their lifetimes (and throughout the novel), surviving Pietro’s marriage with Nadia and his unlikely success as an author and intellectual.

I enjoyed this novel, even though it left me conflicted about its ultimate quality. Narratives which consist of a retrospective account of the protagonists’ lives are hardly new on the scene and seem to be particularly favoured by Italian novelists and filmmakers (I made the same comment in relation to Sandro Veronesi’s Il Colibrì). Moreover, Pietro’s story is often a relatively unexciting, humdrum one and this mundaneness sometimes rubs onto the novel itself. What struck me favourably, on the other hand, were Starnone’s psychological insights into an unusual relationship in which, from the very start, fear, power and control are as central as love, admiration and physical attraction. This concept is expressed obliquely through the (three) different narrative voices – whose identity I will not reveal, there is a limit to the spoilers I dare include in a review!

Lahiri ends her afterword with a song of praise to Starnone: It is my engagement with Starnone’s texts over the past six years that has rendered me, definitively, a translator, and this novel activity in my creative life has rendered clear the inherent instability not only of language but of life, which is why, in undertaking the task of choosing English words to take the place of his Italian ones, I am ever thankful and forever changed. In the view of this reader, it is a task brilliantly accomplished.

Starnone divides his book into three unequal parts, unequal in length and in intensity. It might be because I read the 2nd and the 3rd shorter sections after the lengthy first one, but I found them more focused, I got the message clearer. Or it might be that I feel that way because the lengthy first part paved the way.

Or it might be that men want, crave to dominate the scene more and I had Pietro's perspective in the first one so I trudged after him in all his extrapolations, preening, questions and wonder. Whilst when I got to the second and third parts both are focused and to the point, after all they're from the perspectives of his daughter and his ex-girlfriend, both women, so both busy doing stuff rather than continuously looking through the mirror.

It's a book about perspectives, how we see ourselves and how others see us. How these perspectives differ. How we thrive to keep the image we prefer of ourselves intact and fear the consequences when this image is threatened. But at the same time forgetting, or setting aside the fact that this image is ours alone because those who see us do not see this image but a different one. Probably there are lots of different images of us out there as everyone sees us through his/her own lenses.

This book was not quite the novel I had expected but not in any bad way. I had been anticipating a tale of two lovers who one night each confessed their darkest secret and I thought it would be an exploration of how this affects them and their relationship in the days and months to come. But almost immediately after these revelations, the couple split up and go their separate ways... or do they?

Starnone then goes onto follow Pietro and Theresa through the years as she periodically appears at keystages of Pietros life following his marriage to Nadia and subsequent parenthood. Her haunting presence is both feared and welcomed as his connection with Theresa remains . Out of what is unclear. Is it a romantic longing for the past or just a terrified fear of his secret being revealed?

This book is an exploration of how we always want to show our best side and are fearful of our shameful truths being revealed. It is an astute observation on inner selves and outward appearance.

Not my usual type of book but enjoyable just the same. It made me want to keep on reading and throughly enjoyed it. Well done.

I loved the premise but the book failed to deliver. I just could not engage with any of the characters. I so badly wanted to love it or feel something but it just fell flat. So disappointed.

Pietro is a handsome, well-spoken, but intellectually mediocre (and therefore deeply insecure) high school teacher, who obtains a certain degree fame because of his essays on the Italian education system. At the start of the novella he is in a tumultuous relationship with the energetic, fierce and much more brilliant Teresa, his ex-student. To avoid breaking up they confide each other’s worst secret to one another. But to no avail, the relationship cannot be saved. And Pietro’s fear of Teresa unveiling his dark secret (we never learn what it is) haunts him the rest of his life.

I rather enjoyed this. I found it interesting, with quite a few astute observations on how we want to be seen by others and how that differs from who we believe we really are.

Curiously, I was reading this back to back with Deborah Levy’s The Man Who Say Everything, which has a very similar main character: handsome man looking back on his life with a more brilliant girlfriend who leaves him, not because she is no longer in love, but because he can never be truly and completely hers. I wonder how these two writers came up with such similar protagonists…but I found both novels equally intriguing.

So well written so haunting a relationship between a teacher and his student.A story told from different points of views translated by jumpa lahari .Will be recommending #netgalley#europa

Trust, written by Italian author Domenico Starnone in 2019 and translated into English in 2021, is an interesting book. It immediately attracts people’s attention with its subject. I have always enjoyed novels on human nature, relationships and especially trust. I thought Trust was just for me, but it was a little different than what I expected. There is a writer before you who keeps the reader’s curiosity high and does not reveal the secret between the characters in the end.

Trust revolves around the strange relationship of trust between Pietro, a high school literature teacher, and Teresa, his ex-student and then lover. To put their turbulent relationship in order, Pietro and Teresa reveal to each other secrets they’ve never shared with anyone, even to themselves. Two days after this big announcement, they decide that they can’t stay together anymore and break up amicably. The novel starts to get interesting after that. The reader naturally wonders how these secrets will affect these two characters and whether they will be revealed.

After Pietro and Teresa’s relationship ends, Pietro meets Nadia and falls in love with her. Soon they get married, change houses and have children. In the meantime, we witness that Pietro is scared from time to time because of the secret he has revealed to Teresa and that he believes that if it is revealed, it will change his whole life. On the other hand, Teresa comes in and out of Pietro’s life from time to time; every time, one expects that this time that terrible secret will be revealed and everything will fall apart. On the other hand, we read how connected Pietro and Teresa are to each other with such a secret.

Trust is read with the ebb and flow of the bizarre relationship between this quirky duo. Pietro’s life changes gradually with both his marriage and an article he wrote. We know Teresa, who settled in America and rose rapidly in her career, mainly through Pietro’s eyes. The characters are beautifully written. One feels the tension created by that big secret on every page. In that respect, Trust was pretty good. But in the end, when it was finished, I realized that it didn’t have a significant effect on me. Maybe things would change if I learned the secret, and even though it was terrifying, it would make me think how Teresa could love Pietro after all these years.

I recommend Trust if you are into Italian literature and would like to read about a strange relationship that has lasted for years. Enjoy!

I don't usually read translated Italian literature, but as soon as I saw this was translated by Jhumpa Lahiri I was immediately curious.

I really enjoyed reading this novel, and loved that in was divided in 3 parts, giving us 3 different points of view from different characters.

I would definitely recommend this!

thanks to netgalley and the publisher for this eARC.

dnf. the teacher-student relationship makes me uncomfortable, and the writing was stumbling on itself in a way. most likely a translation thing, but still kept me not immersed in the story. plus the uncomfortable relationship setting.

Domenico Starnone is a master at delving deep into the human psyche and it’s foibles and frailty. Pietro is a teacher who has a relationship with a student. As the physical relationship ends they exchange a singular dark secret with one another that must never be revealed. Pietro continues his career to become a successful writer and speaker but all the while the issue of trust becomes an all consuming issue whether it be within his marriage or whether Theresa will break the promise. Starnone digs within the human heart and mind to explore the relationship between husband and wife and the husband/ father and professional - all could be shattered by the ultimate reveal. This is in an intriguing book and makes the reader consider trust and relationships and who we are in our interconnection with each other and the honesty we actually live. Why not four stars ? No spoiler but the ending left me unsettled.

I thought this was a very different concept for a love story. Very unique and different:
Premise
Pietro and Teresa’s love affair is tempestuous and passionate. After yet another terrible argument, she gets an idea: they should tell each other something they’ve never told another person, something they’re too ashamed to tell anyone. In this way, Teresa thinks, they will remain intimately connected forever.

A few days after sharing their shameful secrets, they break up. Not long after, Pietro meets Nadia, falls in love, and proposes. But the shadow of the secret he confessed to Teresa haunts him, and Teresa herself periodically reappears, standing at the crossroads of every major moment in his life. Or is it he who seeks her out?

I was so curious to watch this story unfold and see if Teresa and Pietronfind their way back to each other. I was definitely surprised. This premise kept me turning the page late until the night.