Finished reading on: November 28, 2007
William and the Gold Coin
Title of the original version reviewed: «Guglielmo e la moneta d'oro»
AI Translation Notice: This review was translated from the original Italian using artificial intelligence. Book quotes and excerpts are translated interpretations and will not match the author's original English phrasing or official published translations.
It is a book for children aged 9–10.
Guglielmo is a young boy who finds a gold coin and discovers that people, even good ones, turn false and wicked out of greed.
The only bonds left to him are those with his dog and a vagrant, a former soldier.
In the end, Guglielmo realizes that, if
a man is free, has friends, has honest work, cares for people, well, perhaps he has something more than one gold coin, or a hundred.
Therefore he is rich
.
The book is pleasant, but it strikes me as somewhat dated, overly simple, and lacking that touch of suspense needed to keep the reading from being entirely predictable.