Starnone does in a few pages what Knausgaard and Ferrante do in thousands

In the second chapter (of three) in Domenico Starnone's 1016 novel, Trick, the narrator, a 75-year-old artist/illustrator who fears he is out of touch w/ the contemporary art scene and losing his talent, tries to get through the three days of caring for his 4-year-old grandson - various games, walks, and other distractions. This is 100-percent not a novel about a cute grandparental bonding or bonding across generations or cranky old man made sweet and sentimental by attentions of youth - not Up, not Man Named Ove, et al. This grandfather is suffering through a physical and emotional crisis, and he's bitter and resentful that his daughter has imposed this task on him. Strangely, he keeps telling the young boy that he has to work - he's a facing a deadline on submitting some illustrations for an edition of a H James story - and expects the boy to amuse himself w/ his own toys and distractions, for hours on end. Anyone knows this will never work; Starnone gives this dynamic a little twist, however, as the grandfather becomes weirdly jealous of the nascent artistic talent (and judgement) that the young boy evinces: the child recognizes right away which of the old man's sketches are on point, an through his simple line drawings in pencil shows the grandfather a direction to follow. Rather than build a bond of love and admiration, however, these realizations and perceptions make the grandfather (we do learn his name, quite late in the novel, it's Mallarico I think - evil wealth?) morose and depressed - and the lead to an absolutely stunning section - section 4 of chapter 2 - in which the narrator reflects in a few pp on the course of his life (the apartment where he is staying is the one in which he was raised from childhood), the anger and vulgarity of this touch Naples neighborhood and how that shaped him and how he escaped from the tough life that would have been his fate but for his unusual artistic talent, a talent he senses now wasting away: Starnone does in this brief section of the novel what Knausgaard and Ferrante (another Neapolitan) do in thousands, delineate the struggles, personal, political, aspirational, of the life of an artist.