Thank you Net Galley. My first read of Ammaniti and I am hooked. It is set in a dystopian world but it is different. Also well written and translated. A very beautiful book.

Interesting but I didn't finish this book so I can't say really if I liked, but it was ok just read a lot better and so not my kind of book.

A great story and fantastic characters. The only thing that disappointed me was the ending. I genuinely thought my kindle had jammed, as it suddenly was the last page without the story ending. There's so many unanswered questions.

A quick and interesting read - I really loved the character of Anna and I found it really refreshing to read about a strong, independent girl. I thought the bond with her brother was lovely too.

Anna, the 12-year-old main character, is the best thing about the book. She's resourceful, confident, and definitely in charge. She confronts challenge after challenge in a depressing, discouraging, unknown world when she is left to care for her young brother after a world-wide a deadly virus has taken the lives of all adults . All survivors (children until they reach adulthood) scrounge and steal as they try to find food and shelter, and Anna is particularly resourceful in doing so. This is my first Ammaniti book, and probably my last. While interesting, I did not find it compelling.

3.5 stars. One thing's for sure: Niccolò Ammaniti doesn't really do upbeat. I remember seeing the film Non ho paura, based on his novel, when I was in Sixth Form and I found it unsettling, powerful and profoundly bleak. The same could be said of this atmospheric novel, set in 2020, which explores a world in which adults have been eradicated by a virus and children are left to fend for themselves. There is more than a hint of Lord of the Flies here, but Ammaniti is interested not so much in the innate savagery of children, as in the power of hope to push us onward, through unimaginable horrors.

Anna and her little brother Astor live in an isolated cottage near the Sicilian town of Castellammare. It's been four years since the adults died and Anna's scavenging forays are forcing her ever further afield. With convenience stores stripped bare, homes broken into and the region scarred by devastating fires, there's little to eat and the two children have come to rely on rare finds of tinned goods. All around them, the world of the Grown-Ups withers away: the cars crashed and stranded on the autostrada, with the skeletons still at the wheel; the bodies lying in beds and chairs in the abandoned houses; the electricity dead and the batteries going flat. Anna's one concern is to protect Astor from the knowledge of what has happened, but their seclusion can't last forever. They are not the only children who've survived and, while Anna can barter with one or two of her former schoolmates, a much larger number of children have turned half-feral, scouring the countryside. Sooner or later, their home will be discovered. And that's not the only thing to fear. Anna is thirteen, almost fourteen. Soon she'll hit puberty. Time is running out.

I must confess that this isn't a book I can see myself rereading. That is not to criticise Ammaniti's atmospheric tale, or the fine, clear translation by Jonathan Hunt, but this is a heavy world to visit, affording only the very faintest gleam of possibility in its heroine's courageous efforts to find a new life for her little brother. Yet it is well done, and it'll be well worth seeking out for those who fancy a modern take on Golding's stranded children, or who relish post-apocalyptic adventures. I can't quite decide whether it damns humanity, as being separated from animals merely by the accident of civilisation, or whether it celebrates us, as being singularly equipped with the capacity for hope.

The full review will be published on 20 July 2017 at the following link:
https://theidlewoman.net/2017/07/20/anna-niccolo-ammaniti