The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paulo Giordano

Alice Della Rocca hated ski school. She hated getting up at half past seven in the morning during the Christmas holidays. She hated her father staring at her over breakfast, his leg dancing nervously under the table as if to say hurry up, get a move on.

She hated the woollen tights that made her thighs itch, the mittens that kept her from moving her fingers, the helmet that squashed her cheeks and the boots that were always too tight and made her walk like a gorilla.

'Are you going to drink that milk or not?' her father said. Alice gulped down three inches of boiling milk that burned all the way down to her stomach. 'OK, today you can show us what you're really made of.'


He shoved her outside, mummified in a green ski suit dotted with badges and the fluorescent logos of the sponsors. It was minus ten degrees and a grey fog enveloped everything. Alice felt the milk swirling around in her stomach as she sank into the snow. Her skis were over her shoulder, because you had to carry your skis yourself until you got good enough for someone to carry them for you.

Translated from Italian by Shaun Whiteside