The two phases and the singulare achievement of Starnone's Trick

I have some quibbles about the conclusion to Domenico Starnone's 2016 novel, Trick, where it seems to me he opts for a soft ending (no spoilers) when he could, and should, have been more harsh and dark - but that said, and not all will agree w/ me on that point - Trick is an excellent short novel and has a truly dramatic, nail-biting sequence in the 3rd (of 3) chapters. This novel is getting some attention in the U.S. largely because that polymath Jhumpa Lahiri has translated it into Italian - has that ever happened before, Americans reading a novel because of the translator? - and she has a few good points to make in her somewhat pedantic (sample vocabulary: recondite? heterodox? ontological? - she hasn't lost her command of English) intro., in which she encourages readers to examine the James short story that the narrator of Trick is hired to illustrate (the story is The Jolly Corner - my guess was right - and it's not one I would recommend on its own; see much earlier posts on that story), but to me her most salient point is her observation that this novel oscillates between two phases: clear direct writing - sharp dialogue, straightforward observations about the apartment and the neighborhood in Naples where the novel takes place, clear delineation of the action - and long, almost Joycean internal monologues about the big issues: mortality, art, life, fate. Yes, she's right, and Starnone, w. an assist from JL, navigates us through these transitions seamlessly - even at its darkest and most esoteric the novel is easy to read, in part because the simple plot - 75-year-old artist whose talent is waning sitting, against his wishes, for precocious and somewhat spoiled 4-year-old grandson, whose antics force the narrator to come to terms w/ the status of his life, his vocation, and his family - a lot going on in a 160-page novel. I knew nothing about Starnone, but see from this novel that he has published extensively in Italy and is considered one of the leading living writings in Italian; I'll probably check out more of his work.