I don't typically enjoy novels set in the present -- and that feeling was certainly reinforced when reading Vincenzo Latronico's Perfection. This is a book very much of today, of the contemporary moment: but it doesn't have much to say -- at least in my reading -- because that moment hasn't passed. It's as if Latronico is aiming at moving, but familiar, target, and the result is a book offering a set of predictable observations about a generation that has been analyzed ad nauseam.
Latronico's focus is a childless couple, who, by the end of Perfection, are approaching forty. They spend their time in equal measures questing and self-congratulating. And they do most of this online -- which is a point Latronico makes repeatedly. It's possible, I suppose, to read this entire novel as a satire, but it was hard for me to avoid the suspicion that Latronico himself expected a pat on the back for all of his detailed renderings of the modern condition: this type of kitchenware, that type of coffee, this family of fonts, etc. Perfection does improve as the novel progresses, but this is only, I think, because the characters have some room to breath, and the descriptions of the objects surrounding them relents.
Perfection does pack a bunch, and it will hit close to home for a subset of urban dwellers approaching forty. But that punch is a temporary one. Had this novel been four times its length, that pain might have been justified. Instead, this is a vignette with a limited number of points to make about a topic that has been endlessly discussed. My preference for novels written decades ago -- before the Internet -- remains intact. Because really, what more can I learn about social media that I don't already know from picking up a newspaper or, worse, from signing on myself?
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