Abel (Feltrinelli, 2023) marks the great return to the novel by Alessandro Baricco, after The Young Bride (2015). A gripping adventure story set in the Wild West with an unforgettable protagonist.
A man, a legend.
I feel a vibration, then I shoot.
I don’t know, like a vibration.
I draw and shoot.
This does it Abel. It’s his life, as long as he’s faster than the others.
It’s not easy and he knows well that, sooner or later, he will find someone stronger than him.
But the time has not yet come. Not today anyway.
The Wild West, land of myths and heroes.
Abel is already a man, despite his young age. He is twenty-seven years old, yet he is a legend.
He almost seems like a member of the 27 club well ahead of his time. Besides the fact that he is still among us.
The reason for its glory?
Simple: our guy foiled a robbery.
Nothing special, apart from the fact that he fired two guns at two different targets. Not bad, right?
This shot is called “the Mystic” and, needless to say, very few people in the world are capable of so much.
Abel is the sheriff of a small town in the West and is in love with Hallelujah, a woman as fascinating as she is enigmatic.
Here’s one thing I learned: There’s no point in lying in Hallelujah Wood.
Because she reads inside him, like no one else has ever done before. And she never will.
She loves him too, despite his mysterious disappearances.
But in the end it always comes back to him, and that’s what matters.
Abel’s mother, however, left without looking back. And no, she didn’t come back.
Yet he will be the one who will go looking for her, because her life is in danger. And it will be up to him to save her.
What a joke. And let’s not forget that man, that shadow that comes from that vast horizon and that will shuffle the cards in Abel’s life once again.
Revelations that could change everything. Or not, maybe everything will remain the same.
Maybe everything is already written and that’s it, we just have to accept it.
What will be Abel’s fate?
Being abandoned? Dying to be reborn as a legend?
The answer seems obvious, but what will Abel decide? We just have to find out by reading these pages.
Alessandro Baricco returns with a western story and with his precise and magnetic style.
A powerful combination that will leave us helpless and without escape, enchanted by simple yet sharp words like razor blades. The sharpest, obviously.
No matter the scenario, each Baricco story gets under the skin and harnesses our senses, giving us a sweet and uncontrollable synesthesia. And that’s fine with us because there’s no point in controlling something so beautiful when you just need to let yourself be carried away.
Characters who will emerge from the pages and who will tell us a story we won’t be able to believe. Yet we will love to give in to the lure of the imagination.
A “universal” book, I can’t think of a single excuse for not recommending these pages.
And, after reading them, I’m sure you’ll agree with me.
Yet another masterstroke from an author who never ceases to amaze.
To read and reread, devouring these pages or sipping them, the choice is yours.
However the right choice.