Is loneliness better than companionship?

Paolo Giordano’s debut novel is a sparsely-written, well-paced, melancholic story centered on two characters: Alice Della Rocca and Mattia Ballossino. Written in short chapters with alternating viewpoints that span from 1983 to 2007, the novel starts with a skiing accident that cripples the young Alice and alters her approach to future relationships. Alice eventually becomes anorexic to regain a lost sense of control over her body and life due to the accident. On the other hand, Mattia, a mathematics genius prone to quantifying situations he perceives as anxiety-inducing or tense, blames himself for the presumed death of his mentally disabled twin sister Michela. Mattia, a self-conscious pre-teen, is embarrassed by his sister and leaves her in a park on the way to a birthday party in an effort to escape being ridiculed by schoolmates. She is not seen again, and Mattia resorts to self-harm as a way to release his panic during the search and, ultimately, whenever he encounters times of emotional stress.

Alice befriends Mattia in high school, where he avoids the outside world by studying and she, in turn, is shunned by the outside. High school being what it is for two uncomfortable misfits, there are scenes of heartbreaking cruelty and social awkwardness. Giordano does an excellent job of portraying how Alice and Mattia deal with them: by clinging to each other. However, previous emotional scars prevent them from holding the relationship together, starting a cyclical series of convergences, but ultimately ending in the loneliness that the book’s title suggests: “Mattia thought that he and Alice were like that, twin primes, alone and lost, close but not close enough to really touch each other.”

After graduating from college, Alice takes Mattia on a celebratory drive and unknowingly ends up in the park where, as a kid, Mattia left his twin sister. Mattia panics and confesses what had happened and Alice, perhaps to calm and protect Mattia or maybe in an effort to move their relationship forward, kisses him: “All Mattia saw was a shadow moving toward him. He instinctively closed his eyes and then felt Alice’s hot mouth on his, her tears on his cheeks, or maybe they weren’t hers, and finally her hands, so light, holding his head still and catching all his thoughts and imprisoning them there, in the space that no longer existed between them.”

Mattia and Alice eventually move away from each other, when he accepts a job offer at a Scandinavian university. Mattia is pushed there unknowingly by Alice, who jumps to the conclusion that he had not factored her in while considering a post that would again separate them. Even apart, they repeat their destructive behaviors with other relationships—Alice alienates herself from her domineering father, her future husband, and her photography mentor while Mattia successfully distances his collaborator at the university where he is destined to shine, his possible lover, and his parents. Alice and Mattia eventually reconnect near the end of the novel. Alice once again puts herself on the line and, perhaps pushing for a resolution, initiates a kiss while Mattia is sleeping, to which he does not object. However, after quick calculations both realize what their true destinies really are.

If you like books with a happy, or even just a tidy, ending then this one may not be for you. But if you are looking for one with well-developed, though traumatized, characters, ones that make you eventually look back and wonder about their choices, make you want to shake them to ask what they are doing, and cause you to question why some people decide their destinies rather than leave things to fate and coincidence, then this book is a very good choice.

The Solitude of Prime Numbers was the winner of the Premio Strega, Italy’s highest literary honor. Giordano’s prose is poetic at times, and shows great control, without overdone descriptions. This is quite an accomplishment for a debut novelist who wrote the novel while completing his graduate studies in particle physics as an escape from his work. Giordano has decided to leave science and pursue writing as a career. The translation by Shaun Whiteside was exemplary as well, helping portray the feeling the author wanted to convey to his readers