I'm Not Scared
by Niccolò Ammaniti
translated by Jonathan Hunt
144pp, Canongate, £12
It is the heatwave summer of 1978, still remembered in Italy for its ferocity and duration. While the dozen adults in Aqua Traverse - a cluster of houses lost somewhere in the south of the peninsula - spend most of the day prostrate indoors, the children set off on their bikes to explore the countryside, tell scary stories and set each other dares. As the narrator Michele puts it: "We could do whatever we liked. No cars ever went by. There were no dangers. And the grown-ups stayed shut up indoors, like toads waiting for the heat to die down." To spare the fat girl who tags along a humiliating forfeit, nine-year-old Michele volunteers to explore an abandoned farmhouse in a remote location at the very edge of the gang's territory. There he makes a mysterious and terrifying discovery that he instinctively decides to keep to himself. He later tries to tell his father, but he doesn't want to know.......
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Approximate Word Count: 1312
Approximate Pages: 6 (260 words per double-spaced page) |