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Dangerous secrets: Verdigris, by Michele Mari, reviewed

A lonely teenager on holiday in Italy befriends his grandparents’ elderly gardener and slowly coaxes out his painful memories of betrayals and reprisals during the war

20 January 2024

9:00 AM

20 January 2024

9:00 AM

Verdigris Michele Mari, translated by Brian Robert Moore

And Other Stories, pp.224, 14.99

In everyday life – on a garden path, flowerpot or lettuce – I back rapidly away from slugs. I didn’t expect to confront them in literature, but in Michele Mari’s Verdigris they are present in abundance, from the first line:

Bisected by a precise blow of the spade, the slug writhed a moment longer: then it moved no more… slimy shame transformed into splendid silvery iridescence.

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