Changes

|title=Every Promise

|author=Andrea Bajani

|publisher=MacLehose Press

|date=June 2013

|summary=Unflinching in emotion, this is an intelligent but slow-paced read about coming to terms with the past and male vulnerability.

}}

Italian writer, Andrea Bajani's ''Every Promise'' is narrated by Pietro. His partner, Sara, has left him due to their inability to have a baby, but soon she finds herself pregnant after a one night stand and reliant on Pietro's mother for advice. Meanwhile Pietro meets Olmo, an elderly man who lives in their old family apartment, who reminds Pietro of his own Grandfather, Mario, who, like Olmo, served in Mussolini's ill-fated Russian campaign. Olmo persuades Pietro to go to Russia to visit the scenes of some of the photographs he has to try to come to terms with the past. It's a story about the past, the present and the future and the struggle for one man to make sense of this. It's packed with surpassingly detailed imagery and Bajani is at times breathtakingly unflinching in exposing the vulnerability of his narrator. However, it is very much a slow burn of a book and it's not always an easy book to read.