Product Description

Called to the hospital when his fifteen-year-old daughter, Angela, is injured in a potentially fatal accident, a prominent surgeon sits and waits, silently confessing the affair he had the year Angela was born. As Timoteo’s tale begins, he’s driving to the beach house where his beautiful, accomplished wife, Elsa, is waiting. Car trouble forces him to make a detour into a dingy suburb, where he meets Italia–unattractive, unpolished, working-class–who awakens a part of him he scarcely recognizes. Disenchanted with his stable life, he seizes the chance to act without consequences, and their savage first encounter spirals into an inexplicable obsession. Returning again and again to Italia’s dim hovel, he finds himself faced with a choice: a life of passion with Italia, or a life of comfort and predictability with Elsa. As Angela's life hangs in the balance, Timoteo's own life flashes before his eyes, this time seen through the lens of the one time he truly lived.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #196603 in Books
• Published on: 2005-07-12
• Released on: 2005-07-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781400034666
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
With this story of a tragic romance, as told by a father to his comatose teenage daughter, Italian actress and novelist Mazzantini plays with the choices people make as they construct narratives, especially what they remember and tell in times of crisis. The decision to frame the narrative as a father's confession makes for an odd conceit, considering the lurid details the protagonist shares about his sex life with both his wife and lover. Timoteo is a successful surgeon with a distant relationship with his beautiful wife and a sexually obsessive relationship with his mistress, Italia. He is selfish and capricious (he meets with Italia just hours after his daughter Angela's birth), but he also exhibits flashes of lucidity that make him an engaging if maddening narrator. "You've learned more about me from my absences, my books, my raincoat in the hall, than you have from my flesh-and-blood self," he tells his unconscious daughter, Angela. Mazzantini keeps the plot moving, shifting quickly between Timoteo's memories and his agonizing wait during Angela's surgery. Too often, though, her prose is overwrought and clumsy: Timoteo relates that his lover's tears "burned [him] like lava," and describes himself waiting in the hospital after Angela's birth like "a moth that's been trapped in a room too long... its wings as heavy as cork." Timoteo's honesty offsets the turgid writing in this enjoyable if somewhat awkward novel, as he traces the trajectory of the sordid relationship that still haunts him, from the "viscid pleasure" in its illicit sex to its predictable aftermath.
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Review
"'Enthralling, compelling and gripping' Mail on Sunday"

Review
"Beautiful. . . . The splintered, humanizing observations that constantly animate this novel . . . are exhilarating" --The New York Times Book Review

"Gripping. . . . It unfolds with the whispered, urgent secrecy of the confessional. The writing is terse, taut and very graphic--like a succession of crystal-clear stills from a dramatic film." --The Daily Telegraph
"Irresistible. Reading Don't Move is like opening the hospital room door to find a tiger pacing in the corridor: there's no looking away, no turning back; nothing is more important than what happens next." --Valerie Martin, author of Property

Customer Reviews

A BRILLIANT EXPLORATION OF OBSESSION
A searing tale of sexual obsession "Don't Move" grips readers with riveting opening lines: "You ran the stop sign. You had your imitation wolf-skin jacket on, your headset was plugged into your ears, and you never even slowed down."

The accident victim is Angela, the only child of Timoteo, a highly respected surgeon, and Elsa, also successful, an independent modern woman. The couple had discussed at length whether or not to give Angela the scooter she so desperately wanted. They had given in at last.

As Timoteo sits alone by his daughter's bedside he realizes she is close to death. This fact, in some mysterious way causes him to reevaluate his own life. He remembers his past, the year before his daughter's birth and his inexplicable passion for Italia, a poor woman he met in a small town bar. His car had broken down, and he was stranded.

Italia was the antithesis of his wife, "She was neither beautiful nor very young, with badly bleached hair and a thin but strong-boned face. She was wearing too much makeup, which made her bright eyes look sad."

Nonetheless his desire for her was undeniable. Reliving his past Timoteo silently pours his anguished confession into the ears of his comatose daughter.

Told largely in flashback "Don't Move" is a marvel of prose as Mazzantini adroitly tells parallel stories of Timoteo's well ordered life with Elsa and his all-consuming, passionate affair with Italia.

Born in Ireland and raised in Italy, Mazzantini is an incredibly skilled writer. "Don't Move," which has sold over a million copies in Italy is her second novel and the first to be published in America. All one can say is welcome to our shores!

- Gail Cooke

Chilling story, but nevertheless Brilliant
The main character tells his daughter who lies in a coma his story. The story of his most intimate feelings towards different people. Obvious his love for his daughter and his fear she might die. The fact that over the years the love towards her mother has gone. And most of all its the story of the obscure relationship for an unknown woman he picked up somewhere, and the graphic account of the raw sex he has with her.
And after a while there is a change in the horrifyingly selfish abuse of the main character towards this unknown woman.
This book is chilling, tender and loving at the same time.
It has in the meantime been travelling my circle of friends. Each and everyone finds it overwhelming. This is a must read for sure.

BRAVISSIMO
I read the Italian version "Non Ti Muovere" and just finished the English translation...what an excellent job done! Mazzantini captures the reader beyond a normal level. I wish the book would never end. If you like her work, "Il Cantino di Zinco" is also very well written, although out of print in English.