PERFECTION

Disclaimer: this is not a review.

Too familiar

Interesting book with no dialogue that examines how what we think we want may be no better than what we already have.

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico opens up with a description of pictures. Realtor photographs of a fashionable, art-nouveau, bohemian apartment in Berlin, chocked full with tasteful furniture, plants galore, ethical and ostentatious artsy pieces, a shared home office with a two computer setup, and appliances, gadgets, things, things. And our protagonists, Tom and Anna, an Italian expat DINC couple who work together as graphic designers and web developers—our protagonists extrapolate from these conceptual images an actual concrete life: one of bliss, leisure, partying, and exploring Berlin’s rich history and expat community; and easy, fulfilling and lucrative work. For it is the 2010s and business is booming; having experience in designing websites all from the early internet, there is a wealth of clients just wanting to get their brand designed and website launched. These images represent a fantasy, an uncomplicated world, a world neatly distilled in its frame, flattened into its pixels.

The pictures are, of course, a mirage, a representation of a conceptual world that does not exist. And this difference between the conceptual and fantasised versus the real and lived is the recurring theme throughout Perfection, a novel about the grass always being greener on the other side, and how reality often has a knack for disappointing your expectations. Tom and Anna move into Berlin in the golden age of tech expansion and cheap rents, and all seems close to their imagined future together—but just for a moment. Then, the novel is a slow and painful exploration of millennial failure. Both Tom and Anna and their temperamental, always shifting group of expat friends, fall victim to the constant pressures of rising rents and failing businesses, and the social decline of modernisation and gentrification. Most importantly though, outside of the external causes of failure, there is this internal sense of unease, the recurring thought that our characters have miscalculated their approach to life, and have never gained any sense of fulfilment at all.

The book is cynically depressing. Latronico’s style is sleek and studied, and the novel is filled with these lists of items found in various scenarios, such as plants, medications, and the endless string of Berlin neighbourhoods. A short but complete novella at around 100 pages, Latronico chooses not to delve into Tom and Anna’s individual personalities, instead referring to them practically collectively throughout, and the novella follows the cyclical pattern of yearning, fantasy, disappointment and depression. They are a couple with certain quirks, but they could be any expat European; any millennial digital nomad. Everything in their life seems performative; and the best part of the novel is when they recognise their complete nonentity status when organising to assist with the Syrian refugee crisis, realising that none of them have any practical skills to offer—they cannot even properly speak German.

The novel is about our modern world and is filled with modern references, including very-close contemporary references to bitcoin and Elon Musk. It would be difficult to discuss the modern world without mentioning the internet, and so, in certain sections, Perfection is a disguised “internet novel.” Unfortunately, like most novels about the internet, I found these sections underwhelming, mostly because it reiterates the same ideas that have been found in countless internet novels beforehand, such as, isn’t it crazy that there are so many things, bad and good, to be found on the internet? Isn’t it horrible that these apps and websites have been designed to get us addicted, and are actively making us sadder? There’s a ‘millennial’ quality to these sections which I don’t really enjoy. But thankfully, unlike most internet novels, this theme is just one of many explored in Perfection, and it doesn’t extrapolate its exploration of the internet to an entire work.

If you don’t laugh you cry, and if anyone is laughing in this novel, it is you, the reader, who wants to scream through the pages to Anna and Tom to stop chasing the internet-fuelled fantasy of liberal party-filled financial independence and commit themselves to something meaningful. But could I say the same? How much is my life geared towards some sort of imagined reality? How do the decisions I make in life compare to our millennial friends here? As much as Latronico aims his sights on liberal hypocrisy and capitalism, he also wants us to introspect into how we relate to our own meaning-making in life, and whether we too foolishly seek some kind of elysium in this imperfect world.

I really enjoyed this recommendation from a friend. It’s an exploration of contemporary Berlin but truly could be set in any cosmopolitan metropolis articulating how a certain kind of globalisation dislocates us from our surroundings. Latronico tells a story of cultural homogenization on a global scale, arguing that obsession with the aesthetics leads to a kind of “colonising of the mind and bodies as much as cities” as literary critic Irene Katz Connelly argues in her review of this book. In a standout section Anna and Tom the book’s protagonists try to have orgy but are unsure if what they feel is “desire or more a desire to desire”. This alienation from the self is at the hollow, restless heart of Anna and Tom’s lives: constantly yearning and never truly fulfilled.

Brilliant book that reminded me of this essay I read years ago in the verge on the creation of “Airspace” that explores an emerging global monoculture and stultifying convergence of tastes. ( https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12325104/airbnb-aesthetic-global-minimalism-startup-gentrification )