Perfection

by Vincenzo Latronico ★★★★☆

This short novella landed on my radar via comedian Anthony Jeselnik, who is a surprisingly avid reader. It was his book of the year, the only one he read twice in 2025, and so I figured it was worth a try.

At just 127 pages, it's easy to consume Perfection in a sitting, and I did. It opens with an overly descriptive representation of a smallish apartment in Berlin. The time period is somewhere around the early 2000s, and we're introduced to our main characters, Anna and Tom, who may as well be a singular character. They both have the same job—"creative professionals", which could translate into "web developer, graphic designer, online brand strategist"—and they both work from home at dueling workstations. They both hail from an indeterminate "southern European city", and after meeting at university they moved to Berlin as a couple for a fresh start.

From the outside, their life appears...fine. And it mostly is. "But it is a life with room for joy, which is clear from every little detail...Beauty and pleasure seem as inextricable from daily life as particles suspended in liquid." They "came of age with the internet", and during our time spent with them, they also experience social media, from the "long and painful wait" until they were allowed to join Facebook through its eventual impact on their personal and professional lives.

The novella is a short profile of the superficiality of a modern society where people find worth from likes and clicks more than something more tangible, the groupthink brought on by social media, and the emptiness felt by so many who depend on it for a good portion of their identity. There is no meaningful character development—Anna and Tom are indistinguishable in their likes and dislikes, motivations and foibles—but they instead are stand-ins for a vast generation of people in a similar boat. They're seeking happiness throughout the novel, a pursuit that is more often than not unfulfilled.

I suspect I'd appreciate Perfection more upon a second reading. It's thoughtful and insightful. But at the same time, I wanted more. More character development, more plot, more tension, more everything. There's an overarching malaise to the 127 pages, which may be the macro point that author Vincenzo Latronico is trying to make, but it was missing something. Satisfying, but not mind-blowing.