★It is an extremely powerful début. One of those books that would seem to be the fruit of years of writing – and instead is the first novel by a young writer who has managed to capture his whole world in compelling images.
★WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT
I went into my room, rummaged in my suitcase and took out Nives’ magnet.
I went into the kitchen and stuck it on the fridge. It would soon be dark and
I’d be able to see it shine with the light stolen from daytime.
“Grandpa?”
He glanced at me.
“Is it possible to stop loving?”
His voice shook but his face stayed serious.
“Perhaps it is,” he murmured.
“Then tomorrow I shall try.”

Two brothers, mountains, pain that no-one wants to give a name to. How much suffering are we ready to undergo in exchange for love?

Engineers talk about “permissible stress”: the greatest strain a building can stand before collapsing. The Empire State Building, for example, survived a B-25 Bomber crash. During the summer that changed his life forever, Olmo really is building a model of the Empire State Building: with infinite patience, aware that the building’s strength lies in each little individual brick. But what is the permissible stress for a family, for the love that keeps people
together?

Olmo, his elder brother Diego and their grandfather are in Val d’Aosta, in the chalet their parents bought before they died. The hope is that those wonderful places will bring peace to Diego’s angry and restless spirit, when he finds a job in a summer camp there. But as soon as the wind rises, the ski-lifts tremble and the dark shadows of clouds loom in the valleys.Only Olmo realizes that Diego is slipping away into a universe where no-one can reach him, a delirium that seems to grow and touch the heavens. And he would give anything to save him.

Emanuele Altissimo was born in 1987 in Turin, where he graduated with a thesis on David Foster Wallace and attended a two-year creative writing course at the Scuola Holden.