FTC: I received a free copy of this book from Book Look in exchange for my honest review. I received no other compensation and the opinions expressed in this review are one hundred percent true and my own.
White as Silence, Red as Song by Alessandro D’Avenia was a hard book for me to read because it seemed to be a stream of conscious book. This book is popular in Italy and if I am being honest I can’t really see why. They are comparing it to the book “The Fault in Our Stars” but to me I can’t see how they are similar at all. I think that part of the reason that I didn’t like this book is because it is written about teenagers and since I am so far removed from that group of people I didn’t feel like I could relate to the characters in this book. It was really well written, so I did enjoy that about this book. I would be willing to check out other books by him in the future if he was writing about adults. I think the book would be great for teenagers and I am sure most of the would enjoy this story.
About The Book
International bestseller White as Milk, Red as Blood, has been called the Italian The Fault in Our Stars.
Leo is an ordinary sixteen-year-old: he loves hanging out with his friends, playing soccer, and zipping around on his motorbike. The time he has to spend at school is a drag, and his teachers are “a protected species that you hope will become extinct,” so when a new history and philosophy teacher arrives, Leo greets him with his usual antipathy. But this young man turns out to be different. His eyes sparkle when he talks, and he encourages his students to live passionately, and follow their dreams.
Leo now feels like a lion, as his name suggests, but there is still one thing that terrifies him: the color white. White is absence; everything related to deprivation and loss in his life is white. Red, on the other hand, is the color of love, passion and blood; red is the color of Beatrice’s hair. Leo’s dream is a girl named Beatrice, the prettiest in school. Beatrice is irresistible – one look from her is enough to make Leo forget about everything else.
There is, however, a female presence much closer to Leo, which he finds harder to see because she’s right under his nose: the ever-dependable and serene Silvia. When he discovers that Beatrice has leukemia and that her disease is related to the white that scares him so much, Leo is forced to search within himself, to bleed and to be reborn. In the process, he comes to understand that dreams must never die, and he finds the strength to believe in something bigger than himself.
White as Milk, Red as Blood is not only a coming-of-age story and the narrative of a school year, but it is also a bold novel that, through Leo’s monologue – at times easy-going and full of verve, at times more intimate and anguished – depicts what happens when suffering and shock burst into the world of a teenager, and the world of adults is rendered speechless.
About The Author
Alessandro D’Avenia, born in 1977 in Palermo, holds a PhD in classics and is a high school literature teacher and screenwriter.
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