The Lake’s Water Is Never Sweet

Adolescent ache and confusion abound in Caminito’s first-rate English-language debut. Teenage Gaia’s headstrong mother, Antonia, moves the family from the bleak industrial outskirts of Rome to the seemingly peaceful lakeside town of Anguillara Sabazia, where their low class status feels glaring to Gaia. Redheaded like her mother and big-eared, Gaia has a paralyzed father, an anarchist older brother, and two twin brothers six years her junior. She doesn’t feel much at home anywhere. At once violent and sensitive, afraid and brave, she deals with the wealthy boys and girls at her new school by embracing her otherness. She eventually befriends Carlotta, Agata, and Iris, but they become constant reminders of what she does not possess. Tragedy strikes after a betrayal and Gaia retreats further into herself and her studies. When she’s betrayed again, she turns to another friend to help her torch an ex-boyfriend’s car. Caminito casts Gaia and her family in stark relief, from the unflinching portrait of Gaia’s dim prospects following her graduation to the wrenching depiction of the family’s sudden return to Rome’s dusty outskirts. It’s a memorable coming-of-age tale. (July)