In the heart of Rome, Vero's upbringing is colored by the vibrant hues of her eccentric family. Her omnipresent mother, an ardent devotee of her own anxieties, is matched by her father's obsessions with hygiene and architecture. Center stage is her prodigiously talented brother, a young genius who commands their attention. As the passage of time ushers Vero into adulthood, her yearning for independence propels her into a series of odd and comedic escapades. At fifteen, she embarks on a futile attempt to flee to Paris.

Within a week of meeting an unwitting older boyfriend, she takes residence in his abode. Notably, she orchestrates a street clothing stall venture, both fraudulent and wildly triumphant, to amass funds for her Mexican voyage. Amid these exploits, she is ensnared by the intoxicating allure of love, often with unlikely and unsuitable contenders.

Vero's trajectory is a tapestry woven with each plot twist, her mother's inexorable pursuit and masterful manipulation casting shadows at every turn. It comes as no surprise that Vero's refuge and outlet become the realm of storytelling—a pursuit that weaves both fact and fiction, a balm for her sanity.

Narrated with a voice that interweaves wry irony with warmth and fondness, "Lost on Me" unfurls its explorations of the intricate interplay between deception and creativity. From Vero's maiden artistic feat—stealing a painting and claiming it as her own—springs an exploration of the nuanced relationship between duplicity and imagination. Its deceptive simplicity conceals moments of both tenderness and a chilling rawness, yielding a tapestry rich in human observation—a testament to its mastery.

Categorized as realistic fiction, the author has masterfully crafted a realm brimming with imaginary personas and circumstances that vividly encapsulate the tapestry of society. Themes of growth, self-discovery, and the confrontation of personal and societal dilemmas converge upon its characters, their lives a reflection of the human experience. The prose, crisp and evocative, breathes life into both setting and characters. Dialogue rings true, pulsating with authenticity, while the pacing achieves equilibrium—infusing ample tension and release to captivate the reader's attention.

While the eBook engrosses, prospects for refinement in user-friendliness beckon. The incorporation of navigational chapter links, the elimination of pronounced word gaps, and the addition of a captivating cover design would metamorphose the eBook's presentation, elevating it beyond its current document-like semblance. Consequently, a minor deduction from my rating is warranted.

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and I would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

Special thanks to Netgalley and Little Brown Book Group UK for providing a copy of this little gem in exchange for an honest review.

Where do I even start with this one? This book has very little structure and barely makes sense but it is still absolutely wonderful! It’s a non fiction story about a young girl from Rome, her dysfunctional family and tenuous grasp on her own existence. The story throws you back and forth like a white knuckle rollercoaster as she recalls stories that have happened in her past, but in no particular order. Each story told from an unreliable narrator at different points in her life and known by various nicknames.

The first part of the book especially was laugh out loud funny and it sadly does lose a little bit of this in the second half. We find her dealing with trauma, grief, loss and her sexual awakening in the only way she knows how with a touch of sarcasm and bitterness.

Looking forward to more stories from this author.

As written on the last page of the book by the author, I too as a reader could not actually tell you what this book was about. For me, I see it as a mix between a love story and a take on love, unrequited.

I wouldn't say this is a new favourite but it was messy and fun. There were parts where I laughed out loud. Definitely open to reading more by this author.

I have started to really get into reading translation fiction from other languages and I was intrigued by the description of Lost on Me as it’s set in one of my favourite city’s and a language I can speak a bit.

I love a coming of age novel and it’s fascinating to see the similarities between growing up in different countries. The beginning of the novel was hard to follow as the I wasn’t used to that style or structure. However, I really enjoyed the narration by the character Vero and the way her writing transcends and evolves to tell her story. She is a lot like me and it was a fun read.

3.5 rounded up ! I really liked the strange narration style of this, however the story just didn't resonate with me as much as I had hoped. Overall, I really enjoyed this one but it was just lacking something for me personally.

I love this book! This is the bildungsroman that I have been looking for. It's hilarious, messy and just mad. But in all the best ways.
Semi-autobiographical, Vero is a truly unique narrator and Leah Janeczko translated her beautifully. She is funny, witty and just plain nonchalent about the crazy events that occur to her. There isn't a plot in this book which could easily turn people away. As a reviewer wrote, it's as if you are having coffee with a friend and she keeps jumping from topic to topic while exploring tangents and u-turning back. But this is what keep this book exciting. Because I never could figure out where the book woudl go next (a few pages about constipation were surpising and hilarious). I highlighted so many quotes from this book, it made me laugh so much.
I give it 4.75 stars.

A book that resists categorisation as the entire point is about the deconstruction, construction and reconstruction of memory, of its fallibility both intentionally and unintentionally. This means that you can read partially as autofiction or as a autobiographical memoir or as a bildungsroman / coming-of-age novel but it is also none of these fully.

The beginning reminded me a lot of Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums as the family certainly admits of its eccentricities: her brother is the child genius of the household, her father constructs walls in the apartment and only lets the family eat canned foods after the onset of Chernobyl, and the mother is particularly overbearing and requires constant updates from her children that continues into their adulthoods. When talking about her daughter to strangers, Veronica’s mother often cites her daughter’s early interest in drawing. The two paintings that hang in the apartment were actually stolen by Veronica from other children. It is in elements like these in which Veronica is out-of-step with her parents that the Fleabag-comparison is so rightly warranted. (There’s also a hot priest moment.) In the first half, this book genuinely made me laugh due to its deadpan sarcasm. It is however tragicomic for in the second half a real tenderness emerges as Veronica recounts saying goodbye to her father, navigates an abortion, unearths the true about a potential affair of her father’s, and reflects on the estrangement from a childhood and teenage best friend.

I view Raimo’s aim as being, as the Italian title hints towards and as the later chapters confirm, to partially deceive the reader through the exploration of gaps in memory and the manipulation involved when as we recount our past.

Raimo creates very linguistic plays on words which, having read the novel first in Italian, I was very curious to see how Leah Janeczko would adapt them into an English translation. For example, one name Veronica ’s father calls her Oca which is ambiguous between “goose” and “bimbo”; the humorous ambiguity is immediate to the Italian reader and Janeczko nicely preserves it by succinct explanation. Regarding the Raimo family lexicon, I also loved her father’s catchphrase for times of crisis: “Siamo arrivati al paradosso!” (“We’ve reached the height of paradox!” In Janezcko’s translation).

I hope that slightly older readers are not mislead by the fact that it was the Winner of the Premio Strega Giovani 2022 which is not a prize for YA fiction. Rather, the format of the prize gives the 12 longlisted books of the main Premio Strega to a panel of 16-18 year olds. In some years such as in 2023, the winners coincide but in 2022.
In sum, I loved this and would recommend this it to Millenials and GenZ alike!

Flew (haha) through Veronica Raimo’s LOST ON ME (translated by Leah Janeczo) on the way home and I absolutely loved it.

Verika recounts her childhood in Rome — her obsessively anxious parents endlessly worrying for their children; their insistence that Verika “likes to draw”; an older brother who is not only the favourite child but the favourite grandchild in a big, Italian family; an itching to escape all of them and create something of her own, to become someone else, and to live uninfluenced by her family and her memories of them. Verika explores her own history among the maze of walls built in her family’s small apartment, reflecting on how her experiences shaped the woman she now is. Incredible.

I really enjoyed this book. It's writing style draws you in and makes you feel like this is a true story rather than a novel.

I'd highly recommend.

This was a little bit of an odd one for me, because I enjoyed it, but I really couldn't tell you why I enjoyed it. It was one of those books that driven more by vibes than by plot. but I quite enjoyed the narrative style. Unfortunately, it could tip over into being a bit overly quirky at points, which I found a little off putting, but it was enjoyable and easy.

I did enjoy this auto-fiction - particularly the early stages. This is a translation from Italian into English about one girl's growing up in Italy. Yes, it is reminiscent of a particular place and time, and yes it is funny in places. However, I feel it lost its way a little towards the end. One downside for me was the skipping over parts of the narrator's life - it felt disjointed and clunky, and I would like to have had a longer book that explored experiences in greater detail.

The way this is written with such brutal and unflinching honesty makes the biting way it tackles family and modern society all the more hilarious. Really cringe-inducing and uncomfortable to read - but in the best way. Reminded me of My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley a bit.

really loved this autofictional (?) coming-of-age (?) novel about vero, whose childhood and adolescence are equal parts insane and mundane in the most compelling way. i laughed lots, unexpectedly cried at a scene about a car, and enjoyed everything this book has to say about memory, art, and the ways we construct both. highly recommend!

Lost on Me is a non-fiction book but will fool you with the narrative voice that it isn't. There is a strong setting of the family and author that is established early on and a narrative voice that is unique. In the author notes, Raimo says that her writing voice was called "frosty" and whilst I can see how this could be interpreted I personally found it less frosty and more just to the point. I think that often life isn't really that dramatic and doesn't need lots of elaborate emotions so this didn't bother me. I felt like I was reading a story as Raimo guides us through her experiences and this book reminds me of litfic, so if you are a serial fiction reader looking for a non-fiction that alludes to the fiction style of writing look no further.

Veronica lives in Rome and is raised by a health freak, hypochondriac father and an anxiety filled, overbearing mother. She has an over achieving boy genius brother and is not always entirely sure where her place in the world is.

The book is basically a stream of consciousness. Veronica recalls the memories of her life and the many situations (some extremely odd) that she has found herself in over the years. She tells us her life story with vivacity and wit and I did feel compelled to keep on reading. She was a funny and humorous narrator but also endearing and honest. I think quite a few people would be able to relate to her stories of friendships and relationships and love and loss.

The story does jump around a bit and she flits from one story to another but for me this feels authentic to how someone would be if they were telling someone about their life. One memory would lead to another, now always orderly and I quite liked that aspect.

The narrator is frank and honest about her recollections of life. Even to go so far as to talk about the true reliability of memories, about what memories mean to each person. How each memory is often interpreted differently by all who were there.

Overall I enjoyed this book. I liked the narrator's style and I felt like it was a different take on looking back on a life. A quirky, entertaining read.

I loved this so so much, witty, scathing and thoughtful. Elena Ferrante with more of a sense of humour! Can’t wait to see what she writes next, the translator is also excellent

Thanks to the publisher and netgalley for my free digital ARC!

I absolutely tore through this one, the prose and translation (by Leah Janeczko) was snappy, easy to devour, funny yet not lacking in depth or resonance. The majority of the book is an interrogation of memory, leaving you feeling slightly breathless by the end and slightly suspicious of everything you’ve just read.
.
Vero, our narrator, had an unusual childhood with her highly anxious mother, paranoid father and genius older brother. She reflects on their childhood spent indoors, forbidden from anything slightly dangerous including learning to ride a bike or swim. After Chernobyl, they spent years only eating canned goods out of their father’s fear of contamination. In the present day, Vero is an author and writing a new novel, this novel, about family.
.
One of those books where there’s not a lot going on, but it’s somehow unputdownable. It’s mainly lots of anecdotes from various stages of Vero’s life, alternatively hilarious then dark then back to hilarious again. There’s a frankness to the writing which felt very refreshing, even as you’re aware that the narrator is freely experimenting with the definition of the ‘truth’. It felt like it was drawing a lot on that idea that every time you recall a memory, the memory becomes a tiny bit more warped every time. We begin to fabricate, build upon our own memories until it’s practically impossible even for us to say what’s real and what’s become more like fiction.
.
I’m not sure how much of it is actually autobiographical, but either way I thoroughly enjoyed it!!

I had absolutely no idea what to expect from this novel. I am always highly suspicious when the book claims to be "hilarious" and fails to hit the mark like a damp squib. This reads like a biography of our intrepid writer "Verika" and i have to admit that the first part of the book was hilarious. The characters were well drawn and believable.
Sadly the second part was a fail for me, "Verika" i felt became lost in her own sense of self importance and the lines between her versions of reality and her land of make believe, as she readily admits, became very very blurred.
I can see why there are so many mixed reviews as you want to like it and enjoy it yet for me it almost felt like she lost interest herself as to whether she was in Rome or Berlin, with the mysterious "A" or alone.

LOST ON ME throws the reader headfirst into the story, sucking the reader in from the very first sentence. It is perhaps best described as a coming-of-age novel, told in the form of a running monologue, as Vero reflects on her family and her life in quite brief, but beautifully crafted, anecdotes and musings. I can't resist a story about a dysfunctional family, and LOST ON ME certainly doesn't disappoint on that score. I have seen LOST ON ME compared to Fleabag, and I think that isn't a bad comparison. Both are engaging, amusing, and affecting coming-of-age stories about dysfunctional families, which manage to feel real enough to be relatable, but exaggerated enough to be memorable.

LOST ON ME wasn't quite a five-star read for me, because I would have liked a little more narrative drive. The story never felt fragmented, and there is a deliberateness to the writing that I appreciated, but I would have liked a slightly clearer plot on top of, or underneath, Vero's reflections. I also appreciated the metaliterary side to the novel, as Vero suggests that she deals with her family and her life through writing about them. This adds a smart and interesting thoughtfulness to the anecdotal nature of the book, as the reader not only reflects on Vero's life and the effect it has had on her, but also on the reliability of Vero as narrator. I'd definitely be interested in rereading LOST ON ME, and seeing how the story changes knowing everything you know by the end.