Book of the week

THE ITALIAN TEACHER TOM RACHMAN, $38

Reviewed by David Herkt

Being the child of a famous parent brings its own burdens. Even cursory research reveals the real-life suicides, unhappy marriages, and failed careers of the children of successful people – and it is nowhere more visible than with the children of actors and artists. Tom Rachman’s novel The Italian Teacher places its reader right in the turbulent heart of this inter-generational storm.

In Rome in 1955, 5-year-old Charles – called “Pinch” – is the son of the larger-than-life American painter Bear Bavinski. His mother, Natalie, is a ceramicist but her career has largely been put on hold while she models for Bear and raises her son. It seems an ideal expatriate world with its colourful trattoria, Vespa scooters and gallery openings.

However, Rachman skilfully strips back the surface. Bear’s personality swamps everything around him. He is the centre of his world and his sensual and sexual appetites are in proportion to this position.

Eventually, he abandons Pinch and Natalie in Rome, where Pinch grows up neither American nor quite Roman.

Taking his cue from his father, Pinch begins to paint. On his first teenaged visit to America he brings one of his own works for his father’s opinion. It comes swiftly and finally. “So I’ve got to tell you kiddo. You’re not an artist. And you never will be.”

The Italian Teacher is the story of appearance and truth – where appearances seem to be incontrovertible until their falsity is revealed. While Pinch might adore his father and accept his opinions (along with his long series of wives and 17 children), Bear is a monstrous man, whose blinkered ego leaves a trail of damage.

Pinch, however, does not see it this way. He begins to study art in college and thinks to become Bear’s biographer. There is the havoc of his own loves and then a subsequent life as an Italian teacher in a London language school. Everything is still dominated by his father, both present and absent.

Just when a reader might think all the facts are in, Rachman begins a dramatic reversal. It is an audacious and triumphant finale. What is real, the book seems to ask, the genuine forgery, or the tainted reality?

The Italian Teacher is, without a doubt, a novel of interest. It outlines a careful thesis about art and humanity, not by exposition but by plot and character. That said, it is a blunt instrument. While its plot and persons might have much to reveal, true subtlety has been erased from its style. What could have been a truly great novel is revealed simply as a thoughtful entertainment.