Firmino by Sam Savage

Firmino by Sam Savage

is a stunning book to my point of view and can be read at different levels. I was re-ordering some books when I met Firmino. My bookclub, Club per Voi, presented me this book with other ones that I bought, many years ago. 

I remembered someone called Firmino asked me the friendship on FB. For the rest living in a countryside and coping constantly with mouses and rats, I decided of post-poning the reading.

What a joy this book is. If you are a passionate of books you must read it!

Why did I write that we can "reading" Firmino at different levels? Because substantially Firmino is the misunderstood, the one no other ones will believe in grade of doing anything or just having a mind in grade of understading the world and its dynamics. Firmino is a sort of  Matilda by Dahl. Someone in the wrong place for the most diversified reasons or in Firmino's case, shape.

No one will think that a mouse is in grade of playing a piano, or having a mind, isn't it true? In a society of appearance like this one, being out of the schemes is not tolerable.

Under many ways Firmino, "read" as a human, is the weakest part of all of us although he is cynical, he can't cry because mouses don't cry and because world is too cruel for crying; he doesn't wait anything from a common mortal; yes he would want to sharing with other ones his thoughts but he can't articulate words, he can't speak like the other ones; his imagine reflected in the mirror is not a beautiful one, but an horrible vision to him. He would want to be human but he is not.

Who is Firmino? Apparently a common mouse born in the Boston of the 1960s and as all the possible mouses of the world, hated for the reasons we know. But...Firmino is different. 

Firmino is human under many ways; he is a passionate of books and girls, good and bad cinema; he loves Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, he reads the Boston Globe and he is a mouse of culture. 

Very soon he discovers that he is different from his siblings, from his mother, constantly drunker. He falls in love for books thanks to the fact that the nest where he was born in was in a bookstore: the Pembroke Books. He decides of staying. He didn't feel a great friendship with and for his siblings, and he won't never miss them. His reading is accurate and will involve all fields of knowledge. Nothing will be missed. At the same time Firmino starts to be affectionated to the owner of the bookstore, Norman. He will also present him some gifts, deciding to stopping because at some point the poor man will be too confused by these strange arrivals when the store is closed.

Firmino thought that he could become friend with Norman, of the bookstore and he will try, but without success. The man, once he discovered him and later his nest, did what we do all the time: he will add some poison for killing him.

Firmino is terrified by this discovery: betrayed by Norman, a man he appreciated a lot.

He will move on; moving on means to him meeting a writer often at the Pembroke Books, Jerry.

Not only this writer won't be scared by him but will bring him at home, a modest home; for disorder, close to the one of a family-mouse, thinks Firmino, donating him a new nest. He won't be surprised when he will find Firmino reading books; he won't be surprised when Firmino played a little piano that Jerry found somewhere and restored at new life.

Jerry was fat, he didn't live good moments sometimes; he was moody, but a good person. 

Too much.

Firmino imagined writers differently: characters like Ernest Hemingway or Francis Scott Fitzgerald attracted much more his attention. Women, excesses, extreme sensations; Jerry in this sense spent a lot of boring time to his point of view. Firmino didn't understand why he lived in that way sharing his existence, just, well, with a mouse.  

One day Jerry fell seriously sick and the arrival of relatives in the house upset to death Firmino. What it writes Savage is impressive: Firmino thought that it was scandalous that the relatives of Jerry did not notice the condition of the place where Jerry lived in, the human conditions he touched, but, mostly, reading the letters that they had sent to him, just being sad for their own time passed by insensitive to all the rest.

The end is stressing under many ways.

Questions left by this book are many.

At a certain point, thinking that maybe I was over-thinking I read two lines of Savage for understanding who he was. I read  that before to becaming a writer of success he was a teacher of philosophy. I thought that I was right in my over-thinking.

Highly recommended. 

Anna Maria Polidori