The value of what we almost throw away

August 15, 2026

There is something distinctly Japanese about Matteo Bussola’s latest novel, Il sole nelle pozzanghere. It may be the delicate atmosphere that runs through the pages, or perhaps the philosophy at its heart, which gives unusual importance to small things and to the quiet rituals of everyday life. At the centre of the story is Mr Pi, a methodical second-hand dealer in his sixties who spends his days finding, evaluating and buying objects that other people have decided they no longer need. Lame chairs, alarm clocks that have stopped keeping time, stuffed animals with a missing ear: objects that arrive at his shop tired, disarmed and wounded, carrying with them traces of the lives they once belonged to.

Mr Pi is known as "the old man of broken things", although he rarely repairs anything in the conventional sense. He cleans, dusts, rearranges and brings things back into view, much as one might treat a memory once it has become possible to look at it without pain. His real talent, however, is not restoring objects but recognising what remains valuable in them. It is this quality that gradually draws a small community of people towards his shop, each carrying their own disappointments, regrets and wounds. As the novel unfolds, these characters begin to resemble the objects surrounding them: none of them is quite as useless or as irreparably damaged as they may have come to believe.

This is where Bussola's story becomes more interesting than a simple tale of consolation. The novel is concerned with repair, but not necessarily with the restoration of things to their original condition. Instead, it suggests that there can be value in accepting wear, imperfection and change. An object does not have to become new again in order to have another life, and the same can be said of the people who gather around Mr Pi. Their second chances emerge not because their pasts disappear, but because someone takes the trouble to see them differently.

There is an obvious connection here with the contemporary interest in reuse and circularity, although Bussola approaches the subject without any of the vocabulary normally associated with sustainability. His story instead starts from something much more human: the reluctance to discard what still has meaning. In a culture increasingly organised around replacement, where objects are often considered obsolete long before they are truly unusable, there is something quietly countercultural about a man whose profession consists of giving forgotten things another place in the world.

This is also where the novel's Japanese quality seems most apparent. There is a particular sensitivity to objects that have been used and marked by time, and to the possibility that imperfection can add rather than subtract from their significance. A chipped plate is not simply a damaged plate; it can become part of a person's morning ritual. An old book can still contain a sentence that feels unexpectedly relevant. The things that surround us accumulate meaning precisely because they have accompanied us through our lives.

Mr Pi's own routines reinforce this sense of attention. Every morning he wakes at six, washes his face, drinks a glass of warm water, makes coffee and eats two dry biscuits, which he places on a porcelain plate chipped in three places. Before setting out on his daily walk, he takes one of the old books piled against the wall of his living room, opens it at a random page and reads a sentence aloud. He then copies it into his orange notebook before leaving the house. The ritual is simple and repetitive, but it captures something essential about the novel: the importance of making room for small acts of attention in a life that might otherwise pass too quickly.

That invitation to slow down is perhaps one of the book's greatest pleasures. Bussola does not need dramatic events to give his characters weight. Instead, he builds his story through ordinary encounters and small gestures, gradually revealing the disappointments and hopes that lie beneath them. His characters are people who have, in one way or another, been left behind by somebody else, and the shop becomes a place where they can begin to imagine a different ending.

The idea of giving things a second life naturally brings to mind the garden, where nothing is quite as final as it first appears. Plants grow, disappear and return; fallen leaves become nourishment; what is cut back can produce new growth. A garden is a living system precisely because it accommodates change rather than trying to eliminate it. In a similar way, Bussola's novel suggests that care does not necessarily mean restoring things to what they once were. Sometimes it means allowing them to become something else.

This makes Il sole nelle pozzanghere a particularly timely book, even though it is not a book about sustainability. Its message is much broader. At a moment when we are beginning to question a culture built on constant consumption and replacement, Bussola offers a gentler perspective on value. The objects in Mr Pi's shop have stories because someone once cared about them, and they can have futures because someone is willing to care about them again.

Perhaps that is why the novel leaves such a warm impression. It asks us to pay closer attention to the things that surround us and to the people we might otherwise overlook. It reminds us that a life does not lose its meaning because it has accumulated scars, and that what has been set aside is not necessarily without value. Sometimes it simply requires time, patience and someone willing to look at it again.

Il sole nelle pozzanghere is ultimately a modern fable about loneliness, care and second chances, but it is also a quiet meditation on the art of paying attention. In a world that moves quickly towards the new, Bussola makes a persuasive case for looking once more at what remains.

CPM