Upper-intermediate Italian short stories (B2)

What makes B2 Italian harder?

Less a new tense than everything at once. B2 chapters run the congiuntivo through thoughts, doubts and reported questions, often without the che that introduces it in textbooks. When an old rival walks into the Ferrante bakery after decades away, this is how the grandmother greets her:

Reported questions take the subjunctive too, which is one of the marks of careful written Italian. An anonymous bidder phones the Bellandi auction house about lot 17, and hangs up before Livia can ask anything:

Which tense are B2 stories told in?

Any of them. At B2 each series picks its narrative tense for effect, so you need to be at home in all three. La Villa di Nonna Giulia unfolds in the present, which makes a family row over a will feel live. Le Lettere di Casa Bellandi, Due Forni, Una Strada and I Segni dell'Orto use the passato remoto. Il Quadro di Nonna Giulia, about an elderly Venetian art expert whose secret from the 1970s resurfaces at Sotheby's, tells its present in the passato prossimo and its past in long runs of trapassato.

Tone carries as much meaning as grammar, and much of it sits in idioms you won't guess from the words. The floor of the auction house creaks come un vecchio ginocchio, like an old knee, and nobody ci faceva più caso (noticed any more). Giulia Ferrante smiles suo malgrado, in spite of herself. A mother tells her daughter to lasciare perdere tutto, to let the whole thing go. Tap the phrase rather than the single word: the app saves the word, but the idiom is what you want to remember.

Which B2 Italian story should I read first?

• For a crime puzzle: Le Lettere di Casa Bellandi, in which a bundle of 1944 letters proves a village legend false and a mystery bidder will pay anything for them, or Le Bugie di Margherita, about a witness to a jewellery theft in Bologna who keeps changing her description of the thief.
• For family secrets: La Villa di Nonna Giulia, where a will leaves the Rossini villa to a woman nobody has heard of, or I Segreti della Scatola di Nonna Rita, a sewing box of fabric scraps that match thefts from the 1960s.
• For romance: Due Forni, Una Strada, the heirs of two feuding bakeries who have been meeting among the flour sacks at four in the morning.
• For sci-fi: Gli Ultimi Messaggi, an app that lets the bereaved text the people they lost, or I Segni dell'Orto, tomato plants in a community garden that grow into the word AIUTA.
• For comedy: Via Giulia Vigila, a Roman street's neighbourhood watch that solves cases before the carabinieri, or Dietro le Quinte, set behind the scenes of a TV drama.

Need something gentler? The B1 Italian stories have shorter chapters. Or go back to the full list of Italian series.