“You will not see, gradually less and less, until you no longer see.”
The Maneras, a wealthy couple from the Florentine area, who have everything in their life. Physical well-being, economic well-being, the possibility of being able to do anything in their life, until they decide to adopt a child to fill the only unbridgeable void, which over time risks becoming a black hole in their lives.
A lack that is actually felt more by the wife than by the husband, but which does not go against the wife’s desire. The adoption process will bring Tan, an eleven-year-old boy from an orphanage in Moldova, into their lives. Despite the welcoming and privileged environment that awaits him in Italy, the child is unable to settle in and feel like his two new parents are his family. Tan’s incomprehensible behavior will have negative repercussions on the life of the Manera couple, who will lead to a separation that was once unthinkable.
The only person who manages to communicate with him is his daughter, Rosa, the same age as the custodians of the estate. The two children soon become playmates, forming a relationship that sometimes risks leaving the rest of the world out.
Tan’s rebellion and anger towards the world almost disappear when he is alone with Rosa, and their relationship over the years, even when they lose each other and then find each other again, is the heart of the book. Interpersonal relationships with people who have in some way accompanied our growth, with our parents and with the outside world, are themes told in a delicate way, in which to varying degrees it is easy to find oneself.
The book is divided into three parts, according to a chronological succession, the one we preferred most for content and perhaps also for the incisiveness of the writing is certainly the first; while we would have preferred the subsequent ones to be structured differently, but it’s a matter of personal taste.
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Lisa Ginzburg, Una piuma nascosta, Rizzoli, Milano, 2023