The Solitude of Prime Numbers
By Paolo Giordano
Random House, $38.99
Reviewed by Nicky Pellegrino

This novel was a massive hit in the author’s native Italy where it sold over a million copies and scooped a prestigious literary award. What’s curious is that it seems the most un-Italian of stories. None of the well-known Latin traits are here; the love of food, the fiery tempers and exuberant passions. Giordano’s characters are the antithesis of all that and his story an exercise in restraint.
The book begins with two traumatic childhood events. Reluctant skier Alice has an accident alone on a foggy mountain. Unpopular Mattia abandons his disabled twin sister in a park because he doesn’t want to take her to a party. These opening chapters are powerful. But the bulk of the story is then taken up with a close examination of the pair struggling with their dysfunctions in the wake of these events and, for me at least, that’s when it falters.
Mattia and Alice are damaged, disconnected people, trapped in awkward relationships. He is a brilliant mathematician and a self-harmer, She is an extremely successful anorexic. Their lives intertwine but, even when they’re together, they stand alone – hence the mathematical metaphor of the title.

This angsty coming-of-age narrative covers the things teenagers are known to obsess about – popularity, sexuality, fitting in – as well as the characters’ deeper problems in the most extraordinarily detached way. The book is 27-year-old Giordano’s literary debut; as well as being a novelist he’s a particle physicist and so perhaps the restrained tone of the writing is what happens when a scientist tackles a psychological drama about the emotions of troubled people. There is admirable clarity and precision in his prose, the characters are believable and the plot compelling but there’s also a pervasive sense of separateness here – as though Giordano is observing his subjects through a microscope, experimenting with them.

The Solitude Of Prime Numbers is a melancholy story but I didn’t find it moving. It’s a pleasing read but not involving. Perhaps if I were 20 or so years younger, and feeling alienated from the world I was beginning to make my way in, this story might have spoken to me and then I’d have connected with it as strongly as the millions of Italians who have made it such a huge success.
Footnote:
Nicky Pellegrino, in addition to being a succcesful author of popular fiction, (her latest The Italian Wedding was published in May this year), is also the Books Editor of the Herald on Sunday where the above review was first published on 30 August.