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Lost On Me by Veronica Raimo:
Year published: 2023
Book # for author: 4th
Genre: auto-fiction
Setting: mostly Rome in the 1980s
Lost On Me by Veronica Raimo book synopsis:
It started out with an interesting premise. Veronica is an Italian woman with a weird family: a mother controlled by her crippling anxieties, a workaholic father who cares a little too much about cleanliness and a genius older brother who receives most of their mother’s worry.
That’s not to say that Veronica isn’t a bit weird too. She lies a lot, at best forgets things, and would rather live in other people’s homes than get her own place. She shares many similarities with the author (her name for one) while the book is labeled fiction. This left us wondering if the story is an exaggerated memoir or just very loosely inspired by her life
She takes us through tales of growing up in such a family, like her futile attempts to run away, her mothers’ endless phone calls jutting into every situation she finds herself in, her different love interests, and then where she is now. The past and present blend together into one.
Lost On Me (Amazon) is practically the definition of “no plot, just vibes,” with a ton of vibes but no clear direction. Usually that’s exactly my style.
My thoughts:
Lost On Me had so much potential…but unfortunately it was lost on me. What went wrong? Everything Veronica says is in bits and pieces from one time or another in her life. Her telling us these stories for the fun of it drove me crazy. Let it add up. Sometimes it did of course. I appreciated that, but still.
The second thing that bothered me was how removed she was from her own life, similar to how Esther was in The Bell Jar (more here). Where was she in all this? It was as if she spoke about somebody’s third cousin, in first person. This was her life, and I couldn’t care more about it than she did. Even her friend called her writing ‘frosty,’ I guess she included this to show us she was aware. And it probably came off even more fragmented after being translated to English.
So although the book had many interesting anecdotes and quoteable quotes, I’d rate it a 4/10.
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