Staff Pick
Archy is a beech marten, born into poverty, maimed by an accident, and sold into servitude by his mother. His master Solomon, a pawn-broking fox, teaches him to read and write based on knowledge he got after a bible fell on his head while he was distracted feeding on a hanged man. Unable to forget what he now knows about God, life, and death, Archy feels torn between intellect and instinct, despite desperately longing to be a “real animal.”
This book is just amazingly well done: each and every character you meet is complete with their own personality and struggles and flaws. Every page you read just makes you want to read another. The tone of this book is both dark and funny and tends to make you laugh when you think maybe you shouldn’t. The way this book talks about poverty, religion, and isolation are deeply real and at times a little bit heartbreaking. Zannoni has a wonderful way of both explaining and simultaneously questioning religion. These bits of uncertainty and indecision, particularly from Archy, in combination with Zannoni’s imaginative style, really make this book the amazing work that it is. Recommended By Aster A., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
A stunning, ambitious novel that follows an unusual protagonist — a beech marten, a kind of weasel, who learns to read and write, discovers God and time, and develops a keen sense of self that makes him seem almost human.
My Stupid Intentions is the autobiography of a beech marten named Archy. Born into poverty, maimed by an accident, he is sold into servitude by his mother and taught to read and write by Solomon — a pawnbroking fox whose knowledge derives from a Bible that fell on his head while he was busy feeding on a hanged man.
Even as Archy's life is transformed by his discovery of the written word and his grappling with the entity called God, he longs for an existence guided by instinct. He longs to be "a real animal." But there is no way of unlearning what he has learned. Caught between his natural urges and his acquired knowledge, he seeks the meaning of his story by writing it.
This debut novel by the young Italian author Bernardo Zannoni is set in a primordial landscape where animals talk and tend their hearths but are never free from the struggle for survival. A picaresque fable, it has drawn comparisons to Pinocchio and Watership Down, The Wind in the Willows and The Stranger.
Review
"My Stupid Intentions is a beautiful beech marten of a novel: cunning, sleek, warm-blooded, and feral. Bernardo Zannoni executes a daring premise with heart and humor. A thrilling debut." — Nathaniel Rich
Review
"In this exciting modern twist on The Wind in the Willows, Zannoni knows when to leave his existential Eden behind and go for the jugular." — Publishers Weekly
Review
"The character of Archy, in all his awkward, vulnerable marten-ness, emerges as courageously as any classical hero....This darkly beguiling novel casts its enchantments with an eye trained on the human heart, with its false chambers and rough, bestial inclinations. A remarkable education in the grief of staying alive." — Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
Bernardo Zannoni is an Italian author from Sarzana. Zannoni began working on his debut novel, My Stupid Intentions, at age 21.
Alex Andriesse was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1985. His stories, essays, and poems have appeared in Granta, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Prodigal, and Literary Imagination. He has translated several works from Italian and French and is an associate editor at New York Review Books.