I read Vincenzo Latronico’s book Perfection, about a young Italian couple who move to Berlin, where they live a highly fashionable life, working as web designers, going to trendy bars and restaurants, making friends with an international community of highly mobile young professionals, and above all, owning a series of beautiful objects that help create stunning pictures for their Instagram feed. It’s inspired by Georges Perec’s Things. The book is clever and very readable, and I recommend it – it was shortlisted for the International Booker and received well-deserved praise.

It’s a very believable account set in a specific time and place which Latronico must surely have experienced, full of neat, exact references. The theme, lightly but clearly outlined, is the contrast between a life that looks perfect ‘in the pictures’ but as lived falls a little short of ideal and becomes subtly unrewarding in a way the couple find hard to address.

Stylistically, it is highly unusual, consisting entirely of generalised descriptions of the sort of thing the couple do, the kind of meals they eat, what types of people tend to become their friends (few Germans) and so on. There is no dialogue or directly described action, and we are frequently told about feelings and moods they often felt. The narrative stays at this high level of generality throughout. It works fine, but I can’t help thinking how the tutor on a creative writing course, or some publisher offering feedback would respond. Why not have someone murdered, they might suggest, then the reader has a story to draw them through all this lovely description? Could you relate an argument they have over soft furnishings or something, just to bring these brand references to life? Have you ever heard of Joseph Campbell and the Hero’s Journey?

This is a very successful, celebrated book, but you and I could never get away with writing like this. You have to ask, how did Latronico ever get a literary agent to take this on? The answer seems to be – he married one.