“At certain times in life we are more or less close to who we really are.”
Let’s start by saying that there’s something extremely essential about this book: everything revolves around a funeral, and—with the exception of the church where it takes place—we move from one house to another, almost without ever changing characters.
Now, having said that, I challenge anyone to choose this book, but the author’s power lies precisely here, in our opinion: few things are put into play, but they open up like a fan.
Six friends spend their childhood and adolescence, exuberant and bold, together in what is quickly christened the Gunners’ house. A favorite and private place for this clique, who will learn to know each other, to discover life, the same life that will instead scatter them across the United States: far from that home. Every now and then, someone remembers to update the group via email on some news, but in reality, each one barricades themselves behind the walls of their own lives as adults, as workers, as lovers.
Yet there’s an event that makes everyone get up from their comfortable chairs and, after years—many years—reunite face to face, forcing them to truly look each other in the eye: Sally—one of them—has taken her own life.
After the funeral, we see friends gather at one of their homes to have dinner, talk, sing, joke, but also cry, tell each other stories, and above all, ask themselves: When did this happen to you? Why didn’t you tell them? But above all, why did Sally leave the Gunners’ house? Why did she take her own life? But who knew anything about Sally?
Yes, it makes you wonder how much and what we know about those we call friends…
And then we should ask ourselves: are we really willing to talk about ourselves? These friends, yes, years pass, but they have the courage to do it face to face: they discover their failures and their fears, the injustices they’ve suffered, the truths they’ve hidden from themselves and their families…
There’s something extremely essential in this story, which contains half the world; we’re certain of it: we’re all here. It’s the story of a friendship that makes us realize that a quick email exchange is never enough to touch a soul, not even our own; but we need to come out into the open, beyond our confines, and everything begins to make a little sense.
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Rebecca Kauffman, La casa dei Gunner, Sur, Roma, 2020
Original edition: The Gunners, Counterpoint, New York, 2018