I'm Not Scared: Summary and book reviews of I'm Not Scared by Niccolò Ammaniti, plus links to an excerpt from I'm Not Scared and a biography of Niccolò Ammaniti.
I'm Not Scared
by Niccolò Ammaniti
Hardcover: Feb 2003,
200 pages.
Paperback: Feb 2004,
208 pages.
The hottest summer of the twentieth century. A tiny community of five houses in the middle of wheat fields. While the adults shelter indoors, six children venture out on their bikes across the scorched, deserted countryside.
In the midst of that sea of golden wheat, nine year-old Michele Amitrano discovers a secret so momentous, so terrible, that he daren’t tell anyone about it. To come to terms with it he will have to draw strength from his own imagination and sense of humanity. The reader witnesses a dual story: the one that is seen through Michele's eyes, and the tragedy involving the adults of this isolated hamlet. The result is an immensely powerful, lyrical and skillfully narrated novel, its atmosphere reminiscent of Tom Sawyer, Stephen King's Stand By Me and Italo Calvino's Italian Fairy Tales.
This is Ammaniti's third book, but his first to be published in the USA.
BOOK REVIEWS
Media Reviews
Publishers Weekly
This gripping American debut by Italian novelist Ammaniti captures well the vagaries of childhood the shifting alliances, the casual betrayals and the mix of helplessness and earnest audacity with which children confront adult situations.
Kirkus Reviews
Rich in setting and detail, Ammaniti's third, his first to be published here, rests contentedly on its YA bedrock.
Washington Post
Ammaniti encloses a suspense story as gripping as any Hitchcock thriller.
The Sunday Herald - Lesley McDowell
Beneath this simplicity, Ammaniti weaves in the fairytale metaphors we know so well, giving the novel a haunting profundity.
The New Yorker
The novel is saved from sensationalism by Ammaniti's almost cinematic ability to conjure detail --the look of scraps of meat on a plate, the sheen of a new bike, the whispers of adults in the night -- and by his utterly convincing re-creation of a child's perspective, as Michele's discovery propels him into ever more uncertain territory.
New York Times
Reading I'm Not Scared is an exciting, provocative experience. Ammaniti has distinguished himself as the most talented of his peers.
Baltimore Sun
This book is breathless, and surprising, to the last word.
LA Times
Considered one of Italy's best young novelists today, Ammaniti deftly handles an incredible plot twist.
San Francisco Chronicle
Niccolo Ammaniti is talented, his descriptions of the sun-baked Italian earth give off a heat that singes the reader's fingertips.'
The Times (UK)
The new Italian word for talent is Ammaniti.
The Guardian (UK)
Don’t start it on the way home from work unless the train terminates at your station.
Independent on Sunday (UK) - Nicola Smyth
Ammaniti’s prose is faultless from the first. . . The brevity of his sentences, the clarity ad perfection of each image, gives his novel some of the flavour of a child’s picture book.
David Issacson Daily Telegraph (UK) I'm Not Scared is an exquisite parable. Ammaniti’s short staccato sentences effectively describe the isolation and simplicity of rural subsistence, while long passages of direct dialogue touchingly portray the children's naïve perceptions.
Recent Reader Reviews
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of 5
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