Blue Hunger’s is a disorientating world made strange by grief — a world where words have lost their meaning, and identity fragments. The narrator experiences China as “the country of philosophy and sex dolls” and Shanghai as a feverish dreamscape, a place of “water the color of arsenic.

Early in the novel, Ruben describes how as a little girl during summer, she would open the windows, turn on all the lights and outstretch her arms and legs for mosquitoes to eat her alive. It moves with a steady, compact agility, like a ship gesturing towards a mid-sea battle … The final scene is a spectacular feat, managing to be both unexpected, and exquisitely tender. Blue Hunger, the fifth novel from Italian author Viola Di Grado, follows Ruben – taking her dead brother’s name – as she navigates the cultural shift of her international escape, while still blindsided by her loss. In the nail salon, a woman with pockmarks slept slumped over in a child-size chair in front of magazine ads taped to the wall. No me gusta que una persona esté dispuesta a hacer cosas que de otra manera no haría para complacer a los demás.Jami Attenberg After her twin's death, a solitary young woman leaves Rome for Shanghai, the city where her brother Ruben had long dreamed of opening a restaurant.

The same hand that she had grabbed suddenly in the street and held all the way to the hotel: a hand that had absorbed a kind of promise.Not my cup of tea, but I would recommend it to readers seeking slow-paced, character-heavy, plotless novels. I usually enjoy plotless novels that sacrifice their plot for a better, more in-depth characterisation, like in this case.