Bug : a novel / Giacomo Sartori ; translated from the Italian by Frederika Randall.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sartori, Giacomo, 1958- author.

Contributor:

Randall, Frederika, translator.

Standardized Title:

BACO. English

Language:

English

Italian

Subjects (All):

Deaf people--Fiction.

Deaf people.

Coma--Patients--Fiction.

Coma.

Coma--Patients.

Dysfunctional families--Fiction.

Dysfunctional families.

Artificial intelligence--Fiction.

Artificial intelligence.

Genre:

Fiction.

Italian fiction -- Translations into English.

Domestic fiction.

Psychological fiction.

Physical Description:

304 pages ; 18 cm

Edition:

First Restless Book paperback edition.

Place of Publication:

Brooklyn, New York : Restless Books, [2021]

Summary:

"Growing up deaf, the young narrator of Giacomo Sartori's novel Bug is hyper-attuned to the vibrations of the atoms in the air and the mental weather in those around him. He has a hard time focusing on what adults want him to, though, and sometimes bites people when agitated. Yet he's hardly the only unique one in his brood. His tech-genius older brother is called IQ in public and Robin Hood in the hackersphere, where he breaks into the systems of the pesticide corporation responsible for decimating his mother's bees. Their semi-estranged father is an engineer who profiles consumers for Nutella, which, our narrator knows, serves as a cover for his real job of pinpointing terrorists. Though divorced, he's moved back into the converted chicken coop where the family lives. They're visited by their grandfather, a retired anarchist now working on a magnum opus about worms. There's certainly enough going on in the family before their mother gets sideswiped by a semi truck and ends up comatose. In his mother's silence, our narrator decides that if he can become better behaved, he'll make her emerald eyes snap back open. His speech therapist and confidante, Logo, takes his sign-language dictation as he relates the events of his days and his thoughts to his mom. He tells her about the artificial intelligence robot his brother is designing, of their battle with the neighbor (he of the pesticides), and the smart beehive they've built for her. And his new mysterious friend, Bug, who shows up on the computer one day and seems very familiar with the family. . . .With the warm satirical humor and intelligence that made readers fall in love with his novel I Am God, Giacomo Sartori weaves a dense dysfunctional family story like no other, weighted with searching questions about how we deal with technology, the earth, and each other."--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: WINTER

Like a bank shot caroming off the rail

An amphora buried in a sunken ship

A dog running out of things to do

Like a sheet of turquoise pasted therefor advertising purposes

Some stickier-than-flypaper questions

Trees lined up as orderly as soldiers on parade

Too many happy endings in my inner soap operas

A miracle of high arctic jewelwork

Our throats were full of pointy stones

SPRING

Words tossed up in the air that come down completely randomly

When the red blood cells sizzle

Scurrying between one tomb and another at the cemetery

Little princes in the aquarium in T-shirts and tennis shoes

The pale blue odalisque reclining on the truck

The translucent belly of the beech wood

Layers of toxic ingredients

Words tied up in the white sheet of silence

An inferno populated by kangaroos and cacti

SUMMER

Radioactive worms in fine form

The only one who didn't think this was a funeral

Big, healthy plants in the cannabis patch

A death camp for bees

We're talking about petabits

Close-up of a bee

The world day of tears

Hunkered down like an alligator in the mud of the cushions

The robot's logorrheic big mouth

A corpse bought on Amazon

A small girl's almost imperceptible energy

Nutella isn't a cyber-weapon

The ATM was spilling cash on the ground.

Notes:

"First published as BACO by Exòrma Edizioni, Rome, 2019"--Title page verso.

ISBN:

9781632062741

1632062747

OCLC:

1237371830