Veronica Raimo’s Lost on Me is a literary feast for lovers of Fleabag (protagonist of the eponymous comedy series) and Natalia Ginzburg’s novels. Like Ginzburg, Raimo writes about dysfunctional families and relationships. Like Fleabag, Raimo’s protagonist, Vero, is a young-ish woman who puts a comic spin on her failed relationships. There are events in Vero’s life that must have been traumatic but the reader encounters them through Raimo’s funny and sharp writing.
Lost on Me was originally published in Italy as Niente di Vero (Nothing True). It has been translated into English by Leah Janeczko and garnered much praise before it was longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024.
Vero is born in Rome to a mother who has an excessive need to be in constant communication with her children, and a father who is a hypochondriac and germophobe who sanitises everything, even his children, with rubbing alcohol. Vero and her brother grow up to be writers and they often finish each other’s works.
Translator Leah Janeczko | Photo Credit: thebookerprizes.com
Raimo expertly portrays the inter-generational ties between women in an Italian family. Vero is a disappointment to her mother who wants her to have many babies and be 20 kg heavier. Vero is not her favourite child, she much prefers her son. Later in life, Vero blocks her mother on social media to prevent her from finding out that she has been single for two years. Her grandmother wishes that Vero had larger breasts and that she would eat more.
Great expectations
Lost on Me is about mothers and daughters — the little delights and tensions in their relationship. It is about the sometimes strange intimacy daughters share with their mothers. The book also explores the societal expectations that women have to live up to — the size of their bodies, their weight, marital status, and so on. Through Vero, the writer shows how women of a certain age are expected to want children. Vero does not want children, she has no maternal instincts but gets choked up over videos of baby foxes and cubs.
Raimo’s voice is original, her writing is sharp and funny. The narrator compares writer’s block to Vero’s internal block, her constipation which does not receive the same heroic reception as her personal despair of constipation. In another instance, Vero’s father calls her ‘oca’ which means goose or bimbo, he also lovingly calls her a cow. “Even as he (father) lay dying, to him I was always Oca. For this reason, whenever I hear a woman called a cow, a vixen, a cougar, a bitch, I am filled with an absurd feeling of tenderness, and the memory of my father prevails over my indignation.”
The book also deals with women’s rights over their bodies. When the protagonist decides to get an abortion, she learns about “angel gardens” where Catholic churches bury foetuses, without the knowledge or consent of the women concerned. The gravestones bear the name of the women along with the dates of abortion.
Lost on Me can make readers laugh out loud at the most ill-timed and unfortunate jokes, but it also makes them pause, to process love and grief.
“I don’t remember exactly when it was that I stopped thinking about my father every day after his death. Sooner or later, it happened, like it does after a relationship ends. You think it’s not possible, but it is.” After her father’s death, suddenly one day, Vero stops feeling like a daughter. She has never forgotten his phone number and her brain mentally dials it. This reminded me of when I was a little girl and was made to memorise my father’s phone number in case I needed it in an emergency. Till date, I cannot remember my home phone number, but my father’s phone number is etched in my memory.
A well-written book reflects your life back at you, and Raimo’s Lost on Me is filled with moments that do just that.
The independent reviewer and editor is based in New Delhi.
