The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Italian author Paolo Giordano offers an elegant and intensely depicted narrative of how childhood traumas can affect our adult lives. The story follows the lives of a boy and girl who have experienced deep emotional and physical scars early in their lives. Their lives intersect during their adolescence, and then diverge upon university and post-graduate phases of their lives.
I absolutely loved the title and its meaning: prime numbers are solitary, indivisible except by themselves; twin prime numbers are prime numbers that are near to each other in numerical sequence, but still have another number in between them to limit their intimacy.
This theme of loneliness, of isolation, of hurt, are artfully written. Powerful fiction that took me completely by surprise, and I found myself wholly mesmerized by the narrative, so much so that I stopped my work and read for hours. I can't remember reading a book cover to cover in a day--actually, in a morning--which isn't to say that the book is an easy read. Rather, it's praise for the way Giordano has impeccably captured the lives of broken, solitary and suffering people.
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