Book Review Paolo Cognetti The Eight Mountains

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2016 Harvill Secker Press – Spoiler alerts A lovely Italian novel, set around the Italian and Swiss Alps, Piero visits the alpine foothills every Summer as his dad obsessively hikes through and up the mountains, usually alone. Piero longs to go with him, but ends up left behind for his early childhood. He befriends a young cow-herder, Bruno, who seems happier with Piero’s family than his own. One day, Piero’ s father finally invites him on a walk up the mountains, but as they climb, Piero discovers that he gets altitude sickness after 4,000 feet. He finds himself left behind as Bruno completes the climbs instead. When his father dies, Piero reunites with Bruno, and now the boys are adults. Bruno shows Piero a ruined old alpine cottage and tells him that his father’s will was for them to rebuild and restore it. As the pair work on the cottage Pietro hears all his father’s secret stories, as Bruno effectively gives him back he life he almost had with his father but missed through his struggle with the high peaks. The story progresses to tragedy, leaving Bruno's back story rather under-developed, and with a few other characters not really explored at all, but overall it is terrific. A gentle, human tale with fabulous descriptions of the hills, valleys and glaciers of the Alps. I found myself reflecting on the life of my own father who also died young, when I was just coming of age. Arthur Chappell