Fires

I first came across Lorenzo Mattotti on Pinterest a few days ago and what I saw compelled me to explore more. Fortunately, I found Fires soon after. I had no idea what a surprisingly wrenching experience this would prove to be. Fires is as obsessed with nature as the Romantic poets were. Clouds like clumps of light move through the sky while rose petals rain down on the island during the day but tongues of fire and their shadows dance in it through the night. Awe and terror are never far from each other when it comes to how Mattotti's characters feel about nature. Eddies of emotions swirl around in its pages, fleeting, surreal, inexpressible but all too human. It speaks with colours, with shapes, with feelings, telling a story that words couldn't have half as well. The story itself is simple enough (but none the less haunting for it) with a few token twists in it but it is the art that has been manipulated to tell it that feels so evocative and deeply personal and is what ultimately makes Fires memorable.

I don't like using the word ‘amazing'. However, it's something I simply cannot avoid for this book. So here you go: truly amazing. The most amazing thing about the book is that it tells a story with hardly any recognisable figurative art. The further you get into the story, the less figurative it gets, perfectly aligned with the main character's state of mind. The pictures tell a story about emotional and sensual development, rather then illustrating what actually is going on.

Hard to fit this book in a category (and why would you?), but if you wanted me to take a guess, I'd say magic realism. Doesn't completely cover it, since - as I said - realism is getting distorted more and more the further you proceed in the narrative.

I own the Dutch version, called ‘Vuren'.