A Tranquil Star by Primo Levi
A week or so ago I stopped into Unnameable Books, a newly relocated bookstore on Vanderbilt Avenue in Brooklyn that divides its space about half and half between new and used books. I picked up a copy of A Tranquil Star by Primo Levi, one of the few books by Levi that I was pretty sure I didn’t have already.
As I began reading, I realized that although I hadn’t bought the book before, I had read it. But that was fine.
A Tranquil Star is a bit of a posthumous grab-bag of stories, not unified by theme like, for instance, The Monkey’s Wrench. Some of the stories read like straight autobiography: “Fra Diavolo on the Po” describes the narrator’s less than inspiring military career, and “The Molecule’s Defiance” is about one of those accidents that happen in the life of an industrial chemist. Others, like “Knall” and “The Magic Paint,” are highly creative, combining the whimsical and the sinister in an effective way.
Altogether, the cool intelligence and clean prose of these tales made them a good choice for reading on muggy August days when the brain is fuzzy and the attention span short.
