Lost on Me follows Vero’s chaotic journey from an eccentric Roman childhood into an adulthood filled with impulsive escapades, mismatched romances, and hilarious missteps. With a mother whose constant anxieties and guilt-tripping foil every plan, Vero's attempts at independence—whether running away to Paris or scheming up a fake clothing stall to fund a Mexico trip—often land her in absurd situations. Her knack for invention and deceit quickly transforms her into both a storyteller and an accidental con artist, capturing the blurry lines between creativity and deception. With wry humor and keen insight, Lost on Me is a warm yet sharp exploration of family, independence, and the art of crafting one’s own narrative.

A quirky coming of age story of a young girl Veronica growing up in Rome, I enjoyed the writing style, it was almost poetic and with her accounts of a strange family dynamic and some funny observations it made a nice and enjoyable, easy read.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

“Francesca’s is on the phone!”

A hilarious euphemism for s%^t proceeding to hit the fan. This deceptively simple story can be relished in one sitting and it was such a refreshing change of pace. Written as what could be a very convincing memoir this is a story of Vero growing up with her eccentric Italian family. We all have that one overbearing parent or weird uncle but Vero seems to have hit the lottery at every turn with an entire tribe of peculiar personalities.
Her childhood is filled with constant comparisons to her prodigious brother and house arrests because of her hypochondriac father. Her personality is born out of utter boredom and she learns the art of deception from a young age. In a noisy household that literally permits no space to anyone because of her father constantly building walls, Vero schemes of escaping throughout her childhood and succeeds only a few brief times. Francesca, her overbearing mother seems to find her at any given time and place and has close to superhuman powers of tracking with a phone in her hand
She feels invisible and insipid and uses wry humour to make her situation bearable. She struggles to maintain relationships and has a very contorted view of human interactions as a result of her strange upbringing. Never fitting, never belonging she is constantly on the journey of self discovery and defining “normal”. She speaks about her dark and troubling experiences matter of factly but one wonders if there is a desensitisation, a permanent disconnect from her emotions, years of frustration fossilised into an unfeeling relic.
The narrative grows on you effortlessly and you find bits and pieces of your own family in Vero’s experiences, the bright and dark ones. You find yourself drawn towards this wonderfully interesting person who has regrettably been neglected her whole life.

Thanks to Netgalley and Virago for the ARC. I couldn’t stop myself from buying the hardback!

It’s no secret I’ve a penchant for all things Italian, including, of course, books.

Lost on Me (Niente di Vero) is a quirky little coming-of-age story set in Rome, filled with humour, neuroses and scathing explorations of girlhood.

Our protagonist, like the author, is named Veronica and lives in Rome with her parents and older brother. The brother, Christian, is the golden child, the genius whose shadow Veronica must live under. Her parents, well, their style is maladjusted, to put it mildly: the omnipresent mother is devoted to her anxiety and self-denial through her Fioretti, and her father ruled to the extreme by hygienic and architectural obsessions.

Lost on Me shows Veronica’s childhood and adulthood on full display. We are invited into her home to witness the absurd, the loving, and the traumatic. But perhaps the most overcoming emotional experience here is isolation - from not being allowed out to play with the other children as a smallie to seemingly being returned ‘home’ at every conceivable opportunity thereafter through her mother's tracking methods and guilt-tripping mastery.

Her adulthood is then spent trying to reconcile this all through her writing. Or maybe this is where the literal meaning of Niente di Vero (nothing is true) comes in, and her story blurs the lines between fantasy and reality, embellished for impact? How reliable is our narrator?

As the saying goes, “They can take away everything but our memories”, but what if your memories are hazy and unreliable? Who’d be interested in them? Well, if it makes a story as compelling as Lost on Me, then many, I imagine.

Lost on Me has been longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024, and I feel it’s a strong contender. 4⭐️

Thank you to the publisher for providing an advance copy via NetGalley. As always, this is an honest review.

"Lost on Me" by Veronica Raimo is a hilarious romp through the eccentricities of Italian family life. Meet Vero, navigating the chaos of her quirky clan with humor and resilience. From failed escapades to unconventional love affairs, her journey is a riotous rollercoaster of mishaps and misadventures. Raimo's narrative crackles with wit and warmth, inviting you into Vero's world of deceitful escapades and artistic aspirations. With each page, you'll find yourself laughing out loud and nodding along in recognition of life's absurdities. "Lost on Me" is a delightful exploration of the tangled web of family, love, and the creative impulse that will leave you thoroughly entertained.

On the whole, I enjoyed this but the last few chapters felt quite slow and without some of the sharp humour I’d grown accustomed to earlier in the book.

3.5 rounded up to a 4
It took a while to get used to the style of writing but when I did I loved it.
A few times I actually felt 'seen' by the narrator (author?) as they are also an 80s baby and although in Rome, had similar experiences to me, a few times I caught myself giggling at situations.
It's a quick read and there are lots of things happening. I did have to re-read a few parts to get back in to the flow. Especially if I had put the book down. I would recommend doing it in one sitting if possible else you might get lost.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the chance to read this ARC

It's a story of youthful rebellion, love, and the pursuit of creative sanity. "Lost on Me" is a witty and heartfelt exploration of the human experience, with memorable characters and a fresh perspective on the complexities of growing up.

Although the novel's opening was captivating, and I really wanted to know what would happen, it soon turned into a rather weird narrative. There was no linear action, and the narrator focused on unexpected elements of the story.
In the end, I appreciated the writing style but did not like the story.

Not my first time reading Italian fiction and it definitely won't be the last. Expect 'Normal People' meets 'Fleabag' from the heart of the Italian capital, Rome. It's partly a bit confessional and partly fiction which is quite popular now. I found it very funny in most places and heartbreaking in others. It's a definite eye-opener. Four stars.

I enjoyed the storyline of this book however the writing style was not something i could get used to.

Now translated into English for the first time, Veronica Raimo’s novel was a runaway hit in Italy, with over 100,000 copies sold in its original language. The book introduces us to the deadpan Vero, who shares wry, sardonic observations and vignettes from her experience of growing up in Rome in the 1980s in an extremely complicated household. Vero’s mother is riddled with anxiety about the well-being of Vero and her brother, constantly checking up on their whereabouts and presuming they’ve died if they don’t answer their phones – while her obsessive father is preoccupied with adding bizarre new rooms to their apartments, and keeping his children safe from invisible germs. Her parents’ mental state drastically limits the freedom that Vero and her brother crave, isolating them from the neighbourhood in an attempt to keep them safe from harm. Young Vero catches rheumatic fever, which leads her father to wrap his daughter in paper towels for a summer, restricting her movement and protecting her against the enemy of ‘sweat’. She makes an attempt to run away to Paris at the age of 15, only to be thwarted by her mother’s extraordinary ability to locate her children no matter where they might have escaped to, and begrudgingly returns home.

As Vero comes of age she falls deeply in love again and again, whether with partners or the sheer delight of experiencing the world for herself, and lets nothing stand in her way. She fakes artisanal clothing to raise funds for a trip to Mexico, she moves in with a lover after a few weeks of knowing them, and gradually becomes a writer – as her brother also does – after finding that their own invented fiction can offer greater solace than the actual lived experience. Vero’s stories are shared haphazardly, almost like they’re being remembered, with tales tumbling into one another and mimicking perfectly the experience of recalling anecdotes from childhood. Is she lying – or can it be called deceit if you genuinely can’t remember how events turned out?

Some of the incidents Vero describes are bleak, some are hilarious, and some are so outlandish that you’ll wonder if they might actually have taken place. In Italian the book is titled Niente di Vero, or Nothing True, which seems fitting for this genre-defying work that slips between fiction, non-fiction, biography, comedy and tragedy – and is an unforgettable, thought-provoking summer read.

Reviewed in the September issue of Cambridge Edition magazine

Sadly, the title of this one was all too apt.

I am not sure how I was meant to feel about the stories we are told. Are they meant to be amusing? I wasn't amused, I was mainly annoyed and horrified.

The main characters family were just annoying? I didn't find much of this compelling. I wanted it to build but I didn't think it did I just felt like it leapt around all over the place and I couldn't help but wish we had more of a solid narrative.

I think it was well written but not for me.

My thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Another brilliant translated book from Italy! This is very much like Natalia Ginzburg and Rachel Cusk had a baby. Sharp, slick writing with dark humour - a fantastic combination!

Oh how I loved Lost on Me for it's quirky characters and acerbic one-liners. Definitely worthy of its Italian best-seller status! I really hope you publish more of Veronica Raimo's work, she's an exceptional writer! Bravo to the translator too.

Darkly comedic, witty and thoroughly entertaining! This was a great read and I enjoyed the writing and chaotic family members in this book. Looking forward to reading more from this author.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the chance to read this ARC

This is a very quirky read. It’s a sort of coming of age novel. It took me a while to get used to the style of writing but once I had read a few chapters I raced through it. It is a monologue told by Vero. Her mother is hilarious and is a constant character. It is very fragmented going back and forth in time. It made me smile in parts . It is really a sequence of anecdotes and I enjoyed the different stories she told . She has a very dysfunctional family and gets in some predicaments.. I think some parts are very true to life, we meet people and lose touch with them . We have dreams and ambitions that don’t always happen. I think that I would need to read it again to fully appreciate it.

Lost on Me is a coming of age story and a meditation on loss, a surreal comedy about feeling like an outcast in your family and the distance created by miscommunication and a lack of understanding, the walls people put up between themselves and others. I enjoyed this book, the bizarre dark humour of this eccentric family and of the strangeness of growing up. I also enjoyed the way it disguised the more serious parts of itself, the ideas of love and loss coming out between the lines and the look at memory and the way we can trick our own memories, the way Veronica layers her own stories on top of what happened to create a narrative without a foundation. This book has a meta element, exploring being a writer and the deceit inherent in autofiction as well as the ways writers use those around them for material. It was a deceptively simple book, a deceptively easy read, but one I feel will stick with me. The translation was also fluid and readable and I believe struck the right tone.

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC!

I had no idea what to expect from this book but I was blown away! It's unique and funny, and really kept me engaged. I can see why it has been a bestseller in Italy! I'm really glad I got to read it and hope that it gets the attention that it deserves.

‘The Italian Tenenbaums’ I kept thinking while devouring this book, maybe the similarity ends with how dysfunctional both families are. Veronica Raimo is exceptional in weaving stories from past and present, fleshing them out in a way that isn’t necessarily tied to her own character, which is usually a hazard in ~family novels where we see characters dip in and out of the protagonist’s life without much thought. It wasn’t as comedic as I expected to be, often exposing the characters to be caricatures — perhaps it is intended.