tanataviele Female, 44, Married. Tarcento, Italy

4 stars for paralleling the story with the idea of the 3-body problem.

0 stars for a victorian teacher that violently intrudes in one of her pupil's family privacy, travels Europe without documents and 2 children who are not her own, and gets away with it. Other plot weaknesses -like being received by the King of Sweden after knocking at the door (well, almost) - can be tolerated, but these last two details are too absurd to be forgiven.

Sometimes when I finish a book I have a strange feeling, sort of a nostalgia, a loss of a world, a "being sorry that the book is over". It was usually good narrative that used to give me that feeling - until I read this book, the only descriptive travel book that managed to catch my heart and not my brain only.

My position toward this book is privileged, since I was born and raised in Trieste, and even though I haven't been living there for some time it's still my dearest town, the one I know better.
As a consequence, places, people, views, feelings I know so well kicked in, in my memory, in such a powerful way that sometimes I felt like I was losing the point of view of the author. But maybe that's what makes the author so remarkable, because this has never happened to me before when reading about Trieste - she really managed to get into the very heart of this city, and report the very feelings it arises. I was particularly impressed by the fact that she perceived what in my opinion are two of the main ghosts that haunt me as a Triestina: hypochondria and in particular the sense of wanting something without knowing what, expecting something, wondering about oneself and the meaning of one's own life.

I'm still wondering about the peculiar concept of nowhereness, that makes the title of the book, and that the author attributes to Trieste. I would like it to be true. And in part it is. I have the impression, though, that the author has somewhat idealized Trieste in this respect, in a way that's typical of visitors that don't actually live there for an extended, continuous time, dealing with the "everyday side" of a place. But maybe she just decided to leave that part out ... who cares after all? At the very end she admits to have portrayed nothing but herself, her Trieste. That's authentic enough.

I highly recommend this book.