GatesyRead

I’m not Scared was a great success for Niccolò Ammaniti, published in 2001 when the author was aged thirty-five. The story is narrated by Michele Amitrano, a curious child living in a dull, hot hamlet where nothing much happens. Exactly where and when Michele is when he recalls the events of that summer is unclear, but some time has passed (‘The wheat was high that year …’[p.1]; ‘ That morning we went off on our bikes’ [p.5]). The narrative opens with the children riding out beyond the boundaries set by their parents. As a storm approaches, they find an abandoned farmhouse, and Michele is dared to enter (an act of selflessness to save the dignity of a girl in the gang). As Michele finds a hidden underground recess, he thinks he has found a corpse. He doesn’t tell the others and returns home with the first terrible secret. Ammaniti’s portrait of boyhood is from a bygone era, when fathers wielded an authority stemming from an accepted level of violence. Beyond the household, worldly i