Lost On Me: A Woman Becoming Herself

- a novel by Veronica Raimo (translated by Leah Janeczko).

Starting off with an interesting premise, Lost On Me is an insanely witty and complex portrait of a woman becoming... herself, simply and basically. It is a coming-of-age story set in Italy, filled with humour and maybe, slight neuroses.

Verika is an Italian woman with a weird family: a mother controlled by her crippling anxieties, a workaholic father who cares a little too much about cleanliness and a genius older brother who receives most of their mother’s worry. What follows is a set of musings on her life, looking back at pivotal formative events and the minutiae of her daily routine as a child.

A descriptive reflection of memories as the author grows older, taking stock of what she had, and of what she’s lost.

The novel and its stories are all good fun, but the more time I spent in Verika’s company, the more I wondered where this is all going, and what the point to it all is.  I’m not convinced we ever quite get there, but towards the end of the book, you do get a sense that there’s a melancholy tinge to all this reflection.  Some of the people introduced have passed on, others have disappeared from her life; in effect, her musings are making her realise that she’s somehow lost a lot of what made her life worth living. Still, that’s only a subtle aftertaste- for the most part the novel is played for laughs and is a fun read. 

The narrative is the story of a family. Lost on Me, through its description sounds like a rather melancholy kind of book, which it is anything but.  In fact, it’s an amusing work, a breezy stroll down memory lane, with the emphasis usually on the lighter side of life.  Verika's, and through her, Veronica the author's, humour is never far away. I gobbled this one up like it was Christmas pudding. I love a good wit in a book, and it served just that.