Synopsis

"Boom, Dead!" is the story of a disabled boy, Andrea, told from the perspective of his brother, the author, who, after years of separation, returns home. The pages, punctuated by the notes his father kept throughout his life, intertwine comical and unusual events—the invention of a magical language in which troublesome words disappear, or the obsession with an "alternative geometry" that forces everyone he knows to rewrite routes and landscapes—with the fears, anger, doubts, and shame the family must confront. The alternating narratives—the irony with which certain aspects of mental disability are described, the icy neutrality of bureaucracy, the intense involvement provoked by surprising revelations and bitter realizations—pattern a journey that never lapses into commiseration, but rather reveals itself as an attempt to build bridges between two seemingly irreconcilable worlds: that of a brother on the path to a "normal" life, and that of Andrea, perhaps destined for eternal separation.