Name: Gemma Copeland's review of PERFECTION by Vincenzo Latronico
Item: PERFECTION
Rating: 4
Author: Gemma Copeland

Vincenzo Latronico

Translated by Sophie Hughes

Millennial expat couple Anna and Tom are living the dream in Berlin, in a bright, affordable, plant-filled apartment. Their life as young digital creatives revolves around slow cooking, Danish furniture, sexual experimentation and the city’s twenty-four-hour party scene – an ideal existence shared by an entire generation and tantalizingly lived out on social media. But beyond the images, dissatisfaction and ennui burgeon. Work becomes repetitive. Friends move back home, have children, grow up. Frustrated that their progressive politics amount to little more in practice than boycotting Uber, tipping in cash, or never eating tuna, Anna and Tom make a fruitless attempt at political activism. Feeling increasingly trapped in their picture-perfect life, the couple takes ever more radical steps in the pursuit of an authenticity and a sense of purpose perennially beyond their grasp. Superbly translated by Sophie Hughes, Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection is a taut, spare sociological novel about the emptiness of contemporary existence, scathing and brilliantly affecting.

PERFECTION 

Gemma Copeland

Quite close to the bone for me as a Londoner living in Madrid. I enjoyed it and also didn’t enjoy it but I guess maybe that existential discomfort is the point

Allegrachatterjee

Accurately captures the vapid, empty nature of modern existence, the human experience in a world mediated by images and incapacitating consumerism, while leaving the reader, the true prisoner of this system, with no reprieve

Marissa Liu

In pursuit of beauty in the aesthetics, the raw discovery of a beautiful life is lost. a sharp and detached look into the lives of Anna and Tom who are slowly confronted with the hollowness of their “perfect” life. was missing the emotional depth that usually makes a book really resonate for me, but perhaps that’s the point

Rabeea

there’s a point in this novel where it discusses food, of all things, as part of anna and tom’s “culture,” discussed the same way “previous generations had discussed films, books, politics [...] it helped define who they were.” and in a narrative about the hollowness of aesthetics, tangible 

 abstracted, it’s curious how little the descriptions of this practice is a) actually about food, yes, but b) especially so in how it’s their textural presence that takes up space on the page: raw cotton table cloths; “candlelit” dinners behind “frost-covered” windowpanes; how cheese would “gleam” and the smell of coffee would “waft” as if by their own intention. verbs and adjectives have never been put to work harder in detaching beauty from its sensory pleasures, and in the end, i hesitate to call 

a novel about performative aesthetics or ennui or even the 21st century digital nomadism to european hedonism pipeline it purports to portray bc it does too well of a job writing about displacement—physical, emotional, to art and creativity, within individuals and in relationships—for something so painfully and unabashedly hashtag first world. 

sometimes, the narration would take care to note that anna and tom’s sensibilities were not planted by marketers, that their choices are informed by “osmosis” and made cultural for it. i’m sure it’s tongue in cheek irony when even mainstream taste requires a particular look that belies the hollowness of “real” insight and intuition, but i’m inclined to believe this recurring point insofar as yeah, i don’t actually think anna and tom were ever after The Look for The Look’s sake. it’s the internal feeling of generous excess they’re after, of having things to give and indulge, of being on the side of worldly affairs that have more to offer than be taken away from them. it’s not even abundance they want to be witnessed in; they know it’s not attainable, or even enviable after a certain point. it’s contentment and fulfillment they chase after as endgame wealth, ever in denial that any endpoint is destined to make an immeasurable journey infinite as a consequence. very mavis gallant. 

this is a beautiful translation, not least bc it preserves, maybe even highlights, the lengths latronico went to absolve anna and tom of any verb-ial agency. they “loved,” always “loved,” and they sure “felt” a whole bunch, but there’s always the sense that these feeling verbs were non-committal, like you could slot “seemingly” or even “kind of” as a qualifier and never change the underlying sense of the sentence. it’s in stark contrast to how the city “ebbs” and “flows,” the trips “paid for themselves,” the future “appeared” out of focus (appear as in seem or appear as in materialize? the joys of literature in translation mwah mwah sophie hughes). it sets things up nicely for how the same divorce happens, only increasingly worse, whenever photography crops up: in the opening scene (one of my favourites in a while!), in the influence of stray photos seen through a screen first thing in the morning, in a small chapter dedicated to a photo of a drowned boy, photographed by a man photographed by another citizen photographed by and by and by. the detachment of bodies made into subjects, even in less overtly political contexts, and guys, honestly, we can’t keep vindicating susan sontag for calling photography both a kind of murder 

i was prepared to hate, honestly! all in all very pleasantly and wholly surprised how much i loved it instead. will remember this every time someone accuses me of not leaving enough room in my heart to love bc my critiquing hat was already on before i started. maybe it’s a skill issue. latronico has nothing to worry about and i am seated for future work.

there’s a point in this novel where it discusses food, of all things, as part of anna and tom’s “culture,” discussed the same way “previous generations had discussed films, books, politics [...] it helped define who they were.” and in a narrative about the hollowness of aesthetics, tangible and abstracted, it’s curious how little the descriptions of this practice is a) actually about food, yes, but b) especially so in how it’s their textural presence that takes up space on the page: raw cotton table cloths; “candlelit” dinners behind “frost-covered” windowpanes; how cheese would “gleam” and the smell of coffee would “waft” as if by their own intention. verbs and adjectives have never been put to work harder in detaching beauty from its sensory pleasures, and in the end, i hesitate to call perfection a novel about performative aesthetics or ennui or even the 21st century digital nomadism to european hedonism pipeline it purports to portray bc it does too well of a job writing about displacement—physical, emotional, to art and creativity, within individuals and in relationships—for something so painfully and unabashedly hashtag first world. 

sometimes, the narration would take care to note that anna and tom’s sensibilities were not planted by marketers, that their choices are informed by “osmosis” and made cultural for it. i’m sure it’s tongue in cheek irony when even mainstream taste requires a particular look that belies the hollowness of “real” insight and intuition, but i’m inclined to believe this recurring point insofar as yeah, i don’t actually think anna and tom were ever after The Look for The Look’s sake. it’s the internal feeling of generous excess they’re after, of having things to give and indulge, of being on the side of worldly affairs that have more to offer than be taken away from them. it’s not even abundance they want to be witnessed in; they know it’s not attainable, or even enviable after a certain point. it’s contentment and fulfillment they chase after as endgame wealth, ever in denial that any endpoint is destined to make an immeasurable journey infinite as a consequence. very mavis gallant. 

this is a beautiful translation, not least bc it preserves, maybe even highlights, the lengths latronico went to absolve anna and tom of any verb-ial agency. they “loved,” always “loved,” and they sure “felt” a whole bunch, but there’s always the sense that these feeling verbs were non-committal, like you could slot “seemingly” or even “kind of” as a qualifier and never change the underlying sense of the sentence. it’s in stark contrast to how the city “ebbs” and “flows,” the trips “paid for themselves,” the future “appeared” out of focus (appear as in seem or appear as in materialize? the joys of literature in translation mwah mwah sophie hughes). it sets things up nicely for how the same divorce happens, only increasingly worse, whenever photography crops up: in the opening scene (one of my favourites in a while!), in the influence of stray photos seen through a screen first thing in the morning, in a small chapter dedicated to a photo of a drowned boy, photographed by a man photographed by another citizen photographed by and by and by. the detachment of bodies made into subjects, even in less overtly political contexts, and guys, honestly, we can’t keep vindicating susan sontag for calling photography both a kind of murder and a cheeky little memento mori. 

i was prepared to hate, honestly! all in all very pleasantly and wholly surprised how much i loved it instead. will remember this every time someone accuses me of not leaving enough room in my heart to love bc my critiquing hat was already on before i started. maybe it’s a skill issue. latronico has nothing to worry about and i am seated for future work.

lily_z_z_z

It’s going to take me a while to figure out how the fck he made this so damn compelling.

Margo Koss

Can people stop writing about what it's like to scroll online and be a person with zero interior life outside of trying to control how you appear to others. An endless row of dull conformists. Lost track of how many times the word 'monstera' appeared. 

chicolini

in pursuit of beauty in the aesthetics, the raw discovery of a beautiful life is lost. a sharp and detached look into the lives of Anna and Tom who are slowly confronted with the hollowness of their “perfect” life. was missing the emotional depth that usually makes a book really resonate for me, but perhaps that’s the point

beea

like... fine... the critique is kind of obvious; it's not nuanced enough to really be compelling. millennials are neurotic and use their laptops too much, gentrification is unsatisfying for the gentrifier, whatever. decent writing

eris

what if a novel was made up only of the parts that should’ve been cut from a novel

lucy rosenthal

Dora Tominic

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. 

Tom Koss

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.

shain

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

Marion

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 )

Gemma Copeland &
PERFECTION by Vincenzo Latronico

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Gemma Copeland &PERFECTION by Vincenzo Latronico

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Gemma Copeland &
PERFECTION by Vincenzo Latronico