This has the sort of dense, intense, highly focused and analytical writing that immerses the reader in the mind and imagination of the narrator as she grows from childhood in the tight, claustrophobic volatile and often violent little Neapolitan neighbourhood that is her whole world. Her friendship with another girl, her struggles as she grows physically and intellectually, the changes in the lives of the people around her, the growing awareness of the larger world, of the history that lies behind the fears and tensions and undercurrents that run through the lives of her neighbours, and which are hinted at in the city and the country beyond. Her eye is pitiless, brutally honest, as much, if not more so, with herself as with anyone else. Her voice is calm, detached, intelligent, probing the outer limits of her awareness and perceptions as she moves from childhood to adolescence. An extraordinary, strangely terrifying book.