Four Blondes - Candace Bushnell

I bought this book thinking it was a long novel about the stories of four blond women who knew each other and whose lives would be somehow connected. It was, instead, a sequence of four stories, with faint connections to each other (some minor characters).
I liked the book. I wasn't able to identify with any of the women Candace Bushnell tells about, because none of them is a real positive hero - but that's why this book is so good. We can participate in the pain, feelings, joys, of each of them, but never totally approve their behavior. The same way as, in real life, nobody is perfect, and it's something we just have to accept!
And the author looks at her "creatures" with love but with a subtle sarcasm, always avoiding to judge too harshly, though.
The stories are well told, the glamourous Manhattan is ever present (even in the last story, which takes place for the most part in London, but where you can breath Manhattan in every step the main character takes).

I like Candace Bushnell, and althoug this is not my favourite novel of hers, I had fun reading it.

Che la festa cominci - Niccolò Ammaniti

I asked to have this book as a Chrismtas present from my family. Having just finished "Nel nome del padre", I was curious of what Ammaniti had reserved for us.

This book very much reminded me, both stylistically and in the topics treated, of the novel "L'ultimo Capodanno" (by the same author).

The writing is, like there, sarkastic and irreverent, and the story (a big party organized by a parvenu in Rome, to show everybody his wealth and power, goes bad, with the most absurd ending). Two stories proceed, first independently, then together, and while at the very beginning we, as readers, tend to like more one of the two main characters (Ciba), then we just feel the pain of the other one (Saverio-Mantos), while Ciba reveals how rotten is his soul at the end.

The characters very much represent a certain kind of Italy, with its will to be peresnt and be seen everywhere, and its underlying idiocy.

I just read some very hard critics on this book...

I do not agree on them, as I really liked it. And this sarcastic thread, if not dominant, was present also in "Nel nome del padre", for example in the story of Danilo or the social worker.

I'd say, it is one of the (many) voices o Ammaniti.