This novel is Italian, but its focus is international: a search across borders for the perfect life. Anna and Tom didn’t intend to become freelance graphic designer-web developers, but came to it naturally through their youthful obsession with the internet. They moved to Berlin for the promise of a freer life, and were captivated by its unfamiliar sensations:

They would go for walks on endless summer evenings and freezing winter mornings when the blinding sunlight would reflect off the fresh snow. They would gaze up in awe at the vast and changeable northern sky, so different from the one under which they had grown…They were fascinated by the contrast between the recently renovated buildings and those still bearing the shabbiness of the former East – the crumbling or graffitied stucco, the boarded-up windows.

[Translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes]

These are surface impressions, though: Anna and Tom don’t really know much about the history of the city. Their life in Berlin runs along similar lines: a carousel of friendships with ex-pats in similar professions, often structured around artistic events even though Anna and Tom aren’t necessarily that interested in art. It’s busy, but missing something. 

As the years pass, people come and go, technology changes, housing is precarious. Through it all, Anna and Tom try different ways to reach a life that feels full and authentic, a life that can live up to the glossy pictures in the apartment ads. 

What really makes Perfection work for me is the way it embodies what it depicts. It skates over the surface of its characters’ lives, not even allowing Anna and Tom individual viewpoints, and rarely pausing to flesh out their experiences. It ends in a way that both ties the work up in a neat little bundle, and reminds one that there’s no real ending after all. The perfect life is always just around the corner. 

Published by Fitzcarraldo Editions.

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