Paolo Cognetti - The Eight Mountains

It turned out that in the winter of 2014 the Western Alps had the heaviest snow for half a century. In the highest ski resorts they recorded three meters of snow at the end of December, six at the end of January, eight by the end of February. Reading these figures in Nepal I could hardly begin to imagine what eight meters of snow would look like in the high mountains. It was enough to bury the woods. So much more than was needed to bury a house.

One day in March Lara wrote to me asking me to phone her as soon as possible. She then told me that Bruno could not be found. His cousins had gone up to check on him, but at Barma nobody had been clearing the snow for some time: the little house had disappeared beneath it, and even the rock face was barely visible. The cousins had called for help, and a rescue team taken up by helicopter had dug down to the roof. They had made a hole in the tiles, and at that point had expected to find him—as sometimes happened with the old mountain folk—having taken to his bed with a sudden illness and died there of hypothermia. But there was no one in the house. Nor could any tracks be found in the surrounding area after the recent snowfalls. Lara asked me if I had any ideas, since I had been the last one to see him, and I said that they should check if there was still a pair of skis in the storeroom. No, they were not there either.

The mountain rescue team began to search the area with dogs, so for a week I called every day, hoping for news, but there was too much snow on the Grenon, and with spring the worst period for avalanches arrived. In March the Alps suffered many: and after the events of that winter, in which the death toll on the Italian mountainsides had reached twenty-two, nobody took much interest in a local man lost from view in a deep valley above his own home. It hardly seemed necessary to Lara or to me to keep insisting that they should prolong the search. They would find Bruno with the first thaw. He would turn up in some gorge in the middle of the summer, and the crows would be the first to find him.

“Do you think that this is what he wanted?” Lara asked me over the phone.

“No, I don’t think so,” I lied.

“You managed to understand him, didn’t you? You understood each other.”

“I hope we did.”

“Because it sometimes seems to me that I never knew him.”

And then I asked myself who was it that had known him on this earth except me? And if what was between us was kept secret, that which we had shared, what was left now that one of us was no longer there?

When those days came to an end, and the city became unbearable, I decided to take a tour in the mountains on my own. Spring is a wonderful season in the Himalayas: the green of the rice paddies dominates the sides of the valleys; a little above them the rhododendrons are in flower. But I didn’t want to go back to a familiar place, or to retrace the path of any memory—so I chose a region where I had never been before, bought a map, and set off. I had not felt the joys of freedom and discovery for a long time now. I found myself leaving the trail, climbing up a hillside to reach a ridge, just out of curiosity, to see what was on the other side, lingering in a village without having planned to, spending a whole afternoon amidst the pools of a river. That was our way of being in the mountains, Bruno’s and mine. I thought that would be a way of preserving our secret in the years to come. It also came to mind that there was a house up there at Barma with a hole in its roof, and that it would not survive like that for very long. And I thought this as if from very far off.

From my father I had learnt, long after I had stopped following him along the paths, that in certain lives there are mountains to which we may never return. That in lives like his and mine you cannot go back to the mountain that is in the center of all the rest, and at the beginning of your own story. And that wandering around the eight mountains is all that remains for those who, like us, on the first and highest have lost a friend.

This reading group guide for The Eight Mountains includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

For fans of Elena Ferrante and Paulo Coelho comes the international sensation about a friendship between two Italian boys from different backgrounds and how their connection evolves and challenges them throughout their lives.

Pietro is a lonely boy living in Milan. With his parents becoming more distant each day, the only thing the family shares is their love for the mountains that surround Italy. While on vacation at the foot of the Aosta Valley in northwestern Italy, Pietro meets Bruno, an adventurous, spirited local boy. Together they spend many summers exploring the mountains’ meadows and peaks and discover the similarities and differences in their lives, their backgrounds, and their futures. The two boys come to find the true meaning of friendship and camaraderie, even as their divergent paths in life—Bruno’s in the mountains, Pietro’s across the world—test the strength and meaning of their connection.

A modern Italian masterpiece, The Eight Mountains is “an exquisite unfolding of the deep way humans may love one another” (Annie Proulx) and a lyrical coming-of-age story about the power of male friendships and the enduring bond between fathers and sons.

1. Pietro’s parents both loved the Dolomites, but how did their love differ? What does this say about their personalities and attitude toward life?

2. How would you describe Bruno and Pietro’s first conversation, and how does this set the tone for their friendship?

3. How does Pietro’s relationship differ with each of his parents? Talk about what Pietro might have in common with his father and his mother, as well as which differences might lead him to value his friendship with Bruno all the more.

4. “I ran a finger over the G and over the B, and it was impossible to have any doubt as to the identity of their author. And so I made a connection between other things, things that I had seen but not understood in the ruins of the buildings that Bruno would take me to…” (p. 27). What is the epiphany that Pietro reaches here?

5. What was the ultimate purpose of Pietro and his father’s visit to the alpeggio ?

6. Pietro observes his mother and father’s efforts to integrate Bruno into their family. How does he feel about this development? How does Bruno seem to feel about it?

7. Describe Pietro at age sixteen. What does he seem to gain? What does he seem to lose? Are these things typical occurrences for people during adolescence?

8. Did the cause of Pietro’s father’s death surprise you? Of this revelation, Pietro writes, “He was only partly the man that I knew, and partly another—the one that I was discovering through my mother’s letters” (p. 89). What does he truly come to learn about his father?

9. Pietro’s mother tells him the story about his father and his uncle Piero. What effect does this story have on Pietro? How does it affect his perception of his father?

10. When Bruno and Lara start a relationship, how does Pietro react? Being around them, what does Pietro realize about himself?

11. How do you interpret the legend of the eight mountains? How does it relate to Pietro and Bruno?