My Account Log in

1 option

The life of those left behind / Matteo B. Bianchi ; translated from the Italian by Michael F. Moore.

Van Pelt Library PQ4862.I177 V5813 2025
Loading location information...

Available This item is available for access.

Log in to request item
Format:
Book
Author/Creator:
Bianchi, Matteo B., 1966- author.
Contributor:
Moore, Michael, 1954 August 24- translator.
Standardized Title:
Vita di chi resta. English
Language:
English
Italian
Subjects (All):
Grief--Fiction.
Grief.
Suicide--Fiction.
Suicide.
Bianchi, Matteo B., 1966---Fiction.
Bianchi, Matteo B.
Genre:
Autobiographical fiction.
Novels.
Physical Description:
296 pages ; 21 cm
Place of Publication:
New York : Other Press, [2025]
Summary:
"In this heartbreaking yet hopeful autobiographical novel, an acclaimed Italian author who lost his partner to suicide testifies to the power of storytelling in living with grief. When in 1999 30-year-old Matteo B. Bianchi published his debut novel - a scathing portrait of the sentimental education of a gay boy from Milan in the 1980s - the timing couldn't be worse: he had just lost S., the man he'd lived with for 7 years, who one day, a few months after they broke up, decided to hang himself in their apartment. Matteo is the first to find the body, to scream without being able to scream. From that day a "dark labyrinth" ensnares him, a whirlpool of suffering, made up of contradictory feelings and constant bewilderment, which unites all the so-called survivors of the suicide of a loved one. Matteo seems to be the unhappy protagonist of a rare event as he feels a unique pain, perversely special. However, at the same time, even in the darkest days, the writer who lives in him starts taking notes. At first, they are just fragments, shards of an existence shattered into a thousand pieces, echoes of feelings alive like nerves that Matteo reports unabashedly on the page. Then, they slowly transform and, memory after memory, become a profound and intimate conversation with S. and the pain, between the temptation to let go and the desire to get back to life. Both radical and vulnerable, intimate and universal, The Life of Those Left Behind is a devastating but luminous novel about surviving the aftermath of trauma. Bianchi produces pages of excruciating beauty, recounting his journey to redemption, hope, and rebirth, and showing how, even in the depths of the most unspeakable pain, writing - his own, and also powerful works such as Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking and Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous - can still save"-- Provided by publisher.
Other Format:
Online version: Bianchi, Matteo B., 1966- Life of those left behind
ISBN:
9781635424522
1635424526
OCLC:
1454850381
Publisher Number:
90102109209

The Penn Libraries is committed to describing library materials using current, accurate, and responsible language. If you discover outdated or inaccurate language, please fill out this feedback form to report it and suggest alternative language.

Find

Home Release notes

My Account

Shelf Request an item Bookmarks Fines and fees Settings

Guides

Using the Find catalog Using Articles+ Using your account