It is, however, Graziano who dots the i’s to what remains a dominant key in Leo’s life. He, like Graziano, is a leftover, a survivor of an extinct species. “‘Look around you,’ he said as we walked down Via del Corso, surrounded by people coming out of office buildings. ‘Is there anything you feel part of? No, there isn’t. And you know why there isn’t? Because we belong to an extinct species. We happen to still be alive, that’s all,’ he said, stopping to light a cigar. Because, if I didn’t know, we were born just when beautiful old Europe was fine-tuning its most lucid, thorough, and definitive suicide attempt.”

Yes, there is more than a touch of self-pity and drama in that statement, but it bites through the novel with sharp teeth, because the truth that even the novel doesn’t see clearly enough is that all those who work in offices and, as Leo is quick to notice, look sprightly and busy cradling their lit pipes in their hands, even they feel like survivors of a long-extinct species. They may not realize it, and may be hiding it from themselves and from everyone else, which is why the novel speaks to everyone, which is why everyone is ultimately a self-identifying existentialist, even when we feel ridiculous admitting it and can so easily trace our own profile in a novel steeped in malaise and ennui. No one belongs, but everyone is persuaded that everyone else belongs. The truth is, we are, each of us, perpetually alone. It is difficult to determine whether what devastates us more is knowing that we are condemned to perpetual solitude or thinking we have been singled out to confront and then deplore our solitude. Leo and Graziano are like two soon-to-be fossils roaming the surface of planet Earth. “If I were a fag, I’d fall in love with you. Wouldn’t we make a lovely couple?” Graziano says. But here is the ultimate bummer: “We’ll turn gay and then at least we’ll be something. This way, what are we now? We’re nothing, not even fags.”

There was a moment when Leo was persuaded that except for Arianna, everything else he touched was destined to be an avanzo. But then, just when he believed she was in his life, he discovers that she too, like everything else in his life, is an avanzo—in this case, an avanzo from another man’s bed.

“Che sfiga,” he thinks when he finally realizes that the woman he loves is now headed to that other man.