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The Guardian
4 days ago
- Health
- The Guardian
Cure by Katherine Brabon review – moments of grace in meditation on chronic illness
Katherine Brabon's fourth novel follows a mother and daughter with a shared experience of chronic illness who travel to Italy in search of a cure. It feels like a companion piece to her elegant previous novel Body Friend, about three women who seek out different ways of managing their chronic pain after surgery. Cure continues Brabon's metaphoric use of doubles, mirrors and reflections to explore the social dimensions of the body in pain. It opens in Lake Como, where, we are told, in autumn 'clouds devour the hills around the lake' and the water 'reflects the scene of disappearance. [It] cannot help but replicate the obscuring fog.' Vera has been here before; she is now taking her 16-year-old daughter, Thea, to a small town in Lombardy, where she herself travelled with her parents as a sick teen, to seek out an obscure man who promises to heal and cure people of their illnesses. Cure captures the painful intimacies between a mother and daughter: 'Vera has lived this, or a version of this, but she wants it to be different for her daughter,' Brabon writes. Vera and Thea are allied in their shared experience of chronic headaches, fatigue and joints stiffened with pain. Both have been subjected to the banal health advice of others – to take cold showers, hot baths, avoid coffee and consume tea. At the same time the pair are estranged – Thea wants to rebel against Vera's anxious and protective proscriptions; Vera favours curatives such as 'supplement powders, tablets, and tea' over the prescribed medications recommended by her doctor husband. Sign up for our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning The gentle and unassuming narrative shifts between Vera's adolescent pilgrimage to Italy and her daughter's, and between sequences from Vera's early adulthood and scenes of the mother and child at home in Melbourne. Vera is taken to a thermal bath in regional Victoria by her parents, and spends hours connecting with other young women online. In Italy, Thea rests and walks to the lake, meeting a teenage boy called Santo. Writing in her journal, she reflects upon how her mother's journey maps neatly on to her own: the same age, the same bed, a shared illness, a shared purpose. To Vera, her daughter is a 'just a body': 'a mirror of her own body … she cannot see beyond the body, its destruction, its inheritance'. Thea and Vera's nights are long, edged with pain; the days are repetitious, spent managing that burden. Brabon is sensitive to how time can dissolve in these efforts of maintenance, bracketing the hours with temporary relief. Vera partakes in a fortnightly regime of subcutaneous injections, while Thea relies on painkillers to alleviate the 'fatigue and fever and aching eyelids'. As she swallows the tablets, she 'feels her mother come back to her'. In this cyclical experience of illness, Thea looks to Vera as a template of what will come. In Thea, Brabon draws a sensitive portrait of a girl adjusting to life in a body that will be constrained. Vera is a complex figure, anxious and tired, whose responsibility for her daughter both draws them together and drives them apart. They turn to writing as a means of communication and escape: Thea retreats into her journal, diarising her own adolescence and crafting stories about her mother; Vera appeals to online communities, where she can share her own experience anonymously. This secret retreat into fantasy is driven by necessity, for it is there that mother and daughter are free to imagine their lives with a supple and mysterious hope. Vera and Thea must live slowly, carefully, and the narrative reproduces this in its structure – to enervating effect. Between sequences of Vera and Thea in the past and present are italicised passages told from an estranged, omniscient perspective. The pair become 'mother and daughter', 'the woman' and 'the girl'. Thea's upset sleep and swollen knees, initially presented to the reader with first-hand intimacy, are reconsidered with toneless neutrality, a flat recital of events: 'The girl feels both happy and angry'; 'the girl walks to the lake'. In adopting this kind of glacial formalism, Brabon perhaps seeks to capture the effects of bodily estrangement with the sage reticence of a writer like Rachel Cusk, whose novel Parade is quoted in the epigraph. Instead, these italicised passages achieve something more dry, too narrow. The warmer haze of Brabon's other prose better captures the feelings of rupture and dissociation brought about by the sick body and by the family in conflict. Brabon's play with narration in Cure signals her subtle exploration of how stories of sickness can be confining, too definitive. Shifting our attention to the ill body beyond pathology, she re-engages with the relational and affective qualities of this experience, sketching a dim world, foggy with illusion and mythmaking. Narrative intensity is stripped back for something softer, more reflective. If the novel's carefully refined atmosphere is sometimes remote to a fault, it also contains arresting moments of grace, as Brabon meditates on the stories we tell about our bodies, wellness, healing and memory. Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion Cure by Katherine Brabon is out through Ultimo Press ($34.99)
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Health
- The Guardian
Cure by Katherine Brabon review – moments of grace in meditation on chronic illness
Katherine Brabon's fourth novel follows a mother and daughter with a shared experience of chronic illness who travel to Italy in search of a cure. It feels like a companion piece to her elegant previous novel Body Friend, about three women who seek out different ways of managing their chronic pain after surgery. Cure continues Brabon's metaphoric use of doubles, mirrors and reflections to explore the social dimensions of the body in pain. It opens in Lake Como, where, we are told, in autumn 'clouds devour the hills around the lake' and the water 'reflects the scene of disappearance. [It] cannot help but replicate the obscuring fog.' Vera has been here before; she is now taking her 16-year-old daughter, Thea, to a small town in Lombardy, where she herself travelled with her parents as a sick teen, to seek out an obscure man who promises to heal and cure people of their illnesses. Cure captures the painful intimacies between a mother and daughter: 'Vera has lived this, or a version of this, but she wants it to be different for her daughter,' Brabon writes. Vera and Thea are allied in their shared experience of chronic headaches, fatigue and joints stiffened with pain. Both have been subjected to the banal health advice of others – to take cold showers, hot baths, avoid coffee and consume tea. At the same time the pair are estranged – Thea wants to rebel against Vera's anxious and protective proscriptions; Vera favours curatives such as 'supplement powders, tablets, and tea' over the prescribed medications recommended by her doctor husband. Sign up for our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning The gentle and unassuming narrative shifts between Vera's adolescent pilgrimage to Italy and her daughter's, and between sequences from Vera's early adulthood and scenes of the mother and child at home in Melbourne. Vera is taken to a thermal bath in regional Victoria by her parents, and spends hours connecting with other young women online. In Italy, Thea rests and walks to the lake, meeting a teenage boy called Santo. Writing in her journal, she reflects upon how her mother's journey maps neatly on to her own: the same age, the same bed, a shared illness, a shared purpose. To Vera, her daughter is a 'just a body': 'a mirror of her own body … she cannot see beyond the body, its destruction, its inheritance'. Thea and Vera's nights are long, edged with pain; the days are repetitious, spent managing that burden. Brabon is sensitive to how time can dissolve in these efforts of maintenance, bracketing the hours with temporary relief. Vera partakes in a fortnightly regime of subcutaneous injections, while Thea relies on painkillers to alleviate the 'fatigue and fever and aching eyelids'. As she swallows the tablets, she 'feels her mother come back to her'. In this cyclical experience of illness, Thea looks to Vera as a template of what will come. In Thea, Brabon draws a sensitive portrait of a girl adjusting to life in a body that will be constrained. Vera is a complex figure, anxious and tired, whose responsibility for her daughter both draws them together and drives them apart. They turn to writing as a means of communication and escape: Thea retreats into her journal, diarising her own adolescence and crafting stories about her mother; Vera appeals to online communities, where she can share her own experience anonymously. This secret retreat into fantasy is driven by necessity, for it is there that mother and daughter are free to imagine their lives with a supple and mysterious hope. Vera and Thea must live slowly, carefully, and the narrative reproduces this in its structure – to enervating effect. Between sequences of Vera and Thea in the past and present are italicised passages told from an estranged, omniscient perspective. The pair become 'mother and daughter', 'the woman' and 'the girl'. Thea's upset sleep and swollen knees, initially presented to the reader with first-hand intimacy, are reconsidered with toneless neutrality, a flat recital of events: 'The girl feels both happy and angry'; 'the girl walks to the lake'. In adopting this kind of glacial formalism, Brabon perhaps seeks to capture the effects of bodily estrangement with the sage reticence of a writer like Rachel Cusk, whose novel Parade is quoted in the epigraph. Instead, these italicised passages achieve something more dry, too narrow. The warmer haze of Brabon's other prose better captures the feelings of rupture and dissociation brought about by the sick body and by the family in conflict. Brabon's play with narration in Cure signals her subtle exploration of how stories of sickness can be confining, too definitive. Shifting our attention to the ill body beyond pathology, she re-engages with the relational and affective qualities of this experience, sketching a dim world, foggy with illusion and mythmaking. Narrative intensity is stripped back for something softer, more reflective. If the novel's carefully refined atmosphere is sometimes remote to a fault, it also contains arresting moments of grace, as Brabon meditates on the stories we tell about our bodies, wellness, healing and memory. Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion Cure by Katherine Brabon is out through Ultimo Press ($34.99)
Forbes
5 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Italy's Flat Tax Is Quietly Reshaping Its Real Estate Market
Aerial photo shooting with drone on Milan Center, the central business area of the city with new ... More skyscrapers and iconic Cathedral and square of Duomo While tax reform debates in the UK and the US continue to make headlines, one of the most consequential developments of the past years has played out more quietly – in Italy. The country's flat tax regime, first introduced in 2017 and increased to €200,000 in 2024, is rapidly repositioning Italy as a destination of choice for high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs). And the impact is now increasingly visible in the real estate and construction sectors. Globally, we are seeing record levels of wealth migration. In 2025 alone, more than 142,000 millionaires are expected to relocate, with the UK projected to lose around 16, by contrast, is expected to welcome approximately 3,600 of these HNWIs – a substantial number shift for a country that, until the introduction of its flat tax regime, had not featured prominently in global wealth migration trends Prime Property Demand Is Just the Beginning The most immediate impact has been felt in the real estate market. Milan, Rome, Florence, and lifestyle destinations such as Lake Como and Tuscany are experiencing rising demand for prime residential stock. Milan's residential prices rose 2% in the past year and have increased between 15 to 28% over the last five years, making it both the most dynamic and the most expensive property market in Italy. In the city's prime areas such as Brera and Porta Nuova, prices now exceed €15,000 per square metre. Energy-efficient new-builds average €7,250 per square metre, often selling out before completion. Demand is also accelerating in formerly overlooked districts like Bovisa and Lambrate, where prices rose by as much as 12% in 2025 alone due to regeneration and transport upgrades. However, this does not appear to be just a passing housing trend. Many of those relocating are putting down roots – setting up businesses, moving their families, and enrolling their children in local and international schools. Cities such as Verona, Bologna, and Turin, which have often been overlooked by global buyers, are also seeing more interest. . Developers are responding accordingly, with new investments flowing into Build-to-Rent (BTR) schemes, renovation projects, and new-build developments designed for long-term use. The focus is shifting from lifestyle to liveability – schools, services, infrastructure, and the everyday quality of life. A Predictable Framework, An Evolving Market What makes the flat tax regime so compelling is not just its cost – €200,000 annually on foreign income, plus €25,000 for each additional family member – but its predictability. Individuals can apply for advance tax rulings before relocating, providing rare legal clarity. Between 2017 and 2023, nearly 4,000 people joined the regime, and uptake has since accelerated. In 2023, 46% of participants also declared Italian-source income totalling €87 million. The regime's exemption of foreign-held assets from Italian wealth, inheritance, and gift tax makes it particularly appealing for long-term planning. For family offices, this framework offers stability in a region where tax law unpredictability can often be a deterrent. Real Estate Meets Broader Urban Regeneration The influx of international residents is also fuelling wider infrastructure demand – from international schools and healthcare to digital services and transport. This dovetails with Italy's €194.4 billion National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), funded by €71.8 billion in EU grants and €122.6 billion in loans. The NRRP is already funnelling €34.5 billion into sustainable mobility, €24.7 billion into renewable energy and waste systems, and €16.9 billion into energy efficiency upgrades for residential and public buildings. Southern Italy is also attracting renewed interest. Regions like Campania, Puglia, and Sicily are now part of the investment conversation. Rich in architectural heritage and natural capital, they offer value – but also regulatory complexity. For developers, this creates both opportunity and friction. For local governments, it signals the urgency of streamlining permitting and improving planning coordination. Challenges Ahead: Managing Growth and Public Perception Despite the momentum, structural challenges remain. Demand continues to outpace supply, especially in Milan's most desirable neighbourhoods, where properties often receive multiple offers and close within weeks. Developers face higher construction costs, lengthy permitting timelines, and increasingly complex energy-efficiency regulations, all of which raise barriers to delivery. Affordability is also becoming a concern. The inflow of international capital is driving up prices, widening the gap between local incomes and housing costs. Without a parallel response on the supply side, Italy risks deepening affordability pressures similar to those seen in other global cities. Administrative bottlenecks compound the issue. Permitting processes remain fragmented, with significant variation across municipalities. For international investors, this lack of consistency can undermine confidence and delay projects. Progress on regulatory reform and planning coherence will be key to sustaining investment. Public perception also matters. While the flat tax has succeeded in attracting wealth, it will only remain viable if it's seen to benefit the country as a whole – not just the few who use it. Clear reinvestment strategies and inclusive policies will be essential to to maintaining long-term support for the policy. Looking Ahead Italy's flat tax was never just about offering a financial incentive. At its core, the policy is meant to bring in people who will stay, contribute, and help reinvigorate the economy – not only in Milan or Rome, but across regions that have seen years of underinvestment. That original goal is now being tested. The increase to €200,000 for new applicants signals that the government still sees the scheme as worthwhile, even as it seeks more revenue. Whether the policy delivers in the long term will depend on what happens next. If Italy wants this early success to last, the focus needs to shift from attraction to integration. Housing must be available where people want to live. Schools, transport, and healthcare need to keep pace. And smaller cities must be given a real chance to benefit too. The flat tax has put Italy on the map for people who could choose almost anywhere in the world to live. Keeping them here – and making that presence count – is now the bigger task.
