“Even in an immobile life, many things move. I have been privileged. My mother and father gave me a culture.”
Ulysses works at a small publishing house very close to bankruptcy. Without understand how, he finds himself imprisoned in a life that does not satisfy him, forced to read ugly manuscripts of budding writers who haunt him in his dreams, a South American girlfriend with whom he has a “stormy” relationship, a mother locked up in a house care and an employer to chase, day after day, to get paid.
When his destiny seems to have been sealed, the mysterious letter from a stranger named Achilles arrives to save him, asking him to meet and to discuss an unspecified issue. Curiosity will push Ulysses to accept the strange invitation, and from then on his life will never be the same.
Over time, the relationship between Achilles and Ulysses will tighten into a respectful friendship, without the two realizing it completely. A peaceful symbiosis from which both will benefit.
The dialogues between the two characters are of a refined wit. Each sentence of Achilles an unexplored path of reflections, especially if we take into account the physical problems with which he is forced to live from birth. An indirect invitation to the whole world to invest in their own cultural formation, because knowledge can make up for any form of physical deficiency and make us independent.
The ending of the story is typical of that of the epic poems of the past, and how could it not be otherwise with the two main characters calling themselves as Homeric heroes? We cannot reveal too much, because we would ruin the taste for reading, but we are sure that it will be very difficult to be disappointed.
The book is easy to read, some hidden aulic reference dropped along the narrative makes it possible to appreciate its natural flavor, like bread crumbs left to lie on the tablecloth while eating. As mentioned above, we much preferred the dialogues between Ulysses and Achilles, compared to the narrated part of the novel, but this is a personal taste, certainly influenced by our total love for Achilles.
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Stefano Benni, Achille piè veloce, Feltrinelli, Milano, 2003
