Aciman evokes the passing of time in rich, meandering prose, rebuilding 1960s Rome in sentences suffused with light and sound and memories ... Both an affecting coming-of-age story and a timely, distinctive description of the haunted lives of refugees.
This is not, in style or spirit, a sad book. It’s filled with canny adaptiveness and invention ... Aciman is a sensitive and passionate writer, and this volume’s packed with human incident ... A brave, sensuous, tender chronicle.
Bittersweet, buoyant and teeming with cinematic detail, André Aciman’s new memoir tells of political upheaval and personal transformation in the vibrant, volatile Mediterranean of the 1960s. Roman Year is a vivid, earthy book about losing a home in North Africa and finding a new, if temporary, one in southern Europe.
Aciman isn’t merely turning the yellowed pages of a family album, and his storytelling skills, always at their sharpest and least self-indulgent in his nonfiction, hardly ever desert him here ... Convincing.
The book is a cornucopia of wonderful impressions and emotions, some so elusive as to challenge, if not defy, verbalisation. It’s a superb portrait of a complex city through the eyes of a complex teenager, on an exciting journey through this unpredictable life.
The book improves hugely in its second half ... Lovers, or potential lovers, performing their uncertain dance: this is where the tedium burns off and the book grips.
With incandescent prose and vibrant imagery, André Aciman evokes the rich, kaleidoscopic and sensual experiences of his coming-of-age ... A gem of a memoir that sparkles with light that reflects off every facet of Aciman’s pivotal year.
