I definitely felt a bit ambushed with the entire book being a phone conversation but it was a lovely conversation about life and mistakes and regrets. It was a beautiful look at the life after a woman is widowed and lonely so she decided to call a vet and instead harangues him with knowledge because of her loneliness.
However, it felt very dragged out and I just don't think I enjoyed it as much as I had hoped.

A sharp, penetrating novella about life in a small rural community, long held secrets and letting go. It starts innocuously enough, after the death of her husband, sixty-something Nives takes in Giacomina, a chicken into the house for company. One night, while transfixed to a television showing a detergent commercial, Giacomina freezes, as if hypnotised and Nives calls the local vet, Loriano for help. Their conversation lasts long into the night and takes up most of the novella, bringing back ghosts from the past, old wounds and resentments. It’s quite a powerful little book about memory, grief and loneliness. I particularly liked its ending. Three and a half stars.

My thanks to Europa Editions and Netgalley for the opportunity to read Tell Me About It.

Nives is a widower from Tuscany. She just lost her husband after 50 years of marriage. Now that she is alone, she lets one hen, called Giacomina, into the house. This way, Nives can sleep again. One evening, after Giacomina stays paralyzed after watching a TV commercial, she calls the local veterinary to help her hen. But soon, this telephone call turns in a different direction, and Nives talks about their youth years and all their friends. This phone call, in the end, turns into a pretty gossipy conversation. Nives reveals some juicy details from the lives of people they both know. This simple conversation lasts for several hours, and suddenly, it is in the middle of the night.

Tell Me About It is a short and easy read that was quirky and interesting enough to keep me reading. A novella was a pleasant surprise from Italian writer Sacha Naspini.

Thanks to Europa Editions UK for the ARC and this opportunity! This is a voluntary review and all opinions are my own.

Ah, what an excellent surprise this slim Italian novel! It is so much fun to discover new authors!

Almost the entire book consists of a single phone call. Nives, who has just lost her husband, calls her vet because one of her chickens has just ‘frozen’ in front of the TV. Without intending to, the call evolves into something completely different. Having lived in the same Tuscan town since their youth the two have a history together – secrets are being revealed, scores are being settled.

If you enjoy good dialogue, good writing and a bit of gossip I can highly recommend this.

Such a brilliant read. It is also a relatively quick read being 140 pages. I loved the quirkiness of this and I lost count of the number of times that I laughed out loud.

The novel starts with Nives pulling the body of her husband out of the pigsty where he has collapsed. She then replaces him with a hen, bringing one her hens into the house for company. When this hen goes into a trance watching TV and she is unable to get it to respond to her, she phones the vet, Loriano. What happens then is their telephone conversation that is the remainder of the novel.

This conversation is wonderful and you get a real sense of these two characters who have known each other for years and years. Nives drops bombshell after bombshell as they reminisce about their lives, the lives of their spouses and children. The conversation is full of comedy, but it is also full of regret, there are some poignant and some painful moments. There is even a twist at the end.

A short, powerful novel of grief, love and regret. A novel packed with humour and emotion. I loved this. Thank you Netgalley and Europa Editions for allowing me to read this.

Previously published as Nives, this is a curious tale..or should I say a phone call.. Following the death of her husband, Nives takes on the farm and befriends a chicken that is hypnotised by a tv commercial. She calls her neighbour for advice and what follows is the dialogue between the two neighbours - reflecting on life , loves , tragedies and all around . This is one sit read and is enchantingly quirky .

Nives was married for fifty years when her husband died. She found his body, shooed the pigs away so they wouldn't eat his entire face, buried him and then continued on without a tear. It was odd, but the only real sadness she felt was being alone in the farmhouse.

So she decides to bring in her favourite hen, Giacomina to live with her and finds her feathered friend provides more comfort and companionship than her late husband ever did. But then history repeats, and Nives finds Giacomina perfectly still in front of the TV and resorts to a late night call to the local Veterinarian, Loriano - an old friend, a ghost from another life.

Their phone call quickly drifts from the fate of Giacomina, from the here and now, into the distant past as Nives and this man who is almost a stranger now revisit the lives, losses and loves they thought they'd left long behind them.

"Hearts at our age shouldn't skip too many beats, it's not pleasant."

Tell Me About It is unlike anything I've ever read. Delicate and poetic, but raw and authentic in it's honesty. This story is a beautiful reminder of the shared experiences that make us human and bind us together - feelings of loss, despair, betrayal but also of love and happiness. Naspini voraciously explores that grey, murky area that is life after loss, and the flickering light at the end that is our immense potential to love.

There is also a stunning aspect to this story that resonated deeply with me - the refreshing and empowering concept of female independence and discovery - of finding ones own identity when it has always been defined by the men in your life. I wholeheartedly appreciate that Nives was not perfect - she was an old woman, who could be abrasive and rude, she was short-tempered and impulsive, but seeing her give herself that unfiltered permission to be her genuine self was a breath of fresh air.

This story is, quite simply, a conversation between two almost-strangers. Only a few pages in, the phone call starts and that's it - that's the whole book. And somehow, Naspini makes it work. There is few mentions of other people, there is no scenery and no action, just works spoken between two people. The prose manages to stay conversational and deeply intimate, but show a poetic, haunting perspective and show us the dreamscapes playing out in Nives and Lorianos memories.

Beautiful in it's simplicity, this story is about the things that keep us up at night, and the reasons we wake up. And once you've read it, you'll definitely want to tell someone about it.

"Day after day, I've been here, gazing at the shards of my broken dreams through misty eyes."

The story is very strange. Don't fret, it would not put you off. On the contrary, it's absurdity quite gets you hooked into book. I did enjoy reading the book.

Tell Me About It by Sacha Naspini is a short novel about a widow and secrets, betrayals and ghosts of the past.

Nives by Sacha Naspini was first published in 2020, and is now being issued by Europa Editions in a translation from the Italian by Clarissa Botsford with the title Tell Me About It. It is a wicked little novella which can be read in one sitting, but which packs a punch and leaves a bittersweet aftertaste, not unlike a shot of grappa.

The book starts off quite wackily. On the very first page, Nives’s husband Anteo Raulli dies in a rather macabre accident on their farm in rural Tuscany. Once the funeral is over, and her daughter Laura goes back to Languedoc where she lives with her French husband and children, Nives tries to ward off loneliness by bringing her favourite hen Giacomina to live with her inside. Nives is surprised to notice that the hen’s company makes up more than adequately for Anteo. One night, however, Giacomina seems to fall into a trance. Panicked, Nives phones Loriano Bottai, the local vet who has cured the Raulli’s farm animals for decades. As the phone call proceeds, we realise that that Nives and Loriano share a colourful history beyond a pure professional relationship. It will be a night of shocking revelations, nostalgic reveries, painful discoveries and brief moments of unexpected tenderness.


To be honest, none of the characters come across as particularly endearing – certainly not, to my mind, the acidic Nives or the spineless Loriano. But I’m not one who believes that a story needs “lovable” leads to be engrossing. Indeed, the dark humour of the barb-filled dialogue between Nives and Loriano is what gives this novella its particular flavour.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2022/04/Tell-Me-About-It-Nives-Sacha-Naspini.html

I'm really not sure what to say about this book, that doesn't give the whole plot away.
It's short, and strange and somewhat amusing.
I think mostly strange.
It's also entertaining.
I enjoyed it.