Ai tempi del virus

I’ll admit I approached *Ai tempi del virus* with skepticism—yet another pandemic book? But within 20 minutes, I was gut-punched by how *alive* it feels. The standout here is the audio production’s bold choice to preserve the unevenness of the source material. Some stories (like the ER doctor’s 3 a.m. monologue) are recorded with a deliberate lo-fi intimacy, while others (a historian’s analysis of plague literature) get crisp, studio-clean delivery. It’s a risky move, but it works—until it doesn’t. My one critique: the transitions between wildly different tones can be jarring. A philosopher’s abstract musings on time might abruptly cut to a child’s simple, devastating question about why nonna can’t hug them anymore. Ciommei does her best to bridge these gaps with pauses, but sometimes the whiplash pulls you out of the moment. The narration is mostly brilliant, though I wished Ciommei had leaned harder into the musicality of certain pieces. Her reading of the poet’s contributions feels almost too measured—where was the rhythm, the *rage*? That said, her handling of the military dispatch-style entries is chilling, her voice clipped and precise, making the subtext of fear all the more palpable. The real triumph is how the audiobook captures Italy’s specific cultural texture: the Catholic guilt threading through a nurse’s confession, the bureaucratic absurdity in a mayor’s edict, the operatic despair of a restaurant owner watching his life’s work rot. It’s not always *enjoyable*—some sections drag, and a few contributions feel like vanity projects—but it’s *necessary*. Like sifting through a nation’s collective diary, typos and all.