What an experience it was to read this book in my twenties! To experience all over again the excitement and curiosity of first love, to feel the characters’ hearts pound with the unprecedented pain that comes when you lose, for the first time, the person you fell in love with. To find yourself, unfiltered, in the intricate dialectic of someone who is experiencing the same complex choices as you, discovering that you, too, live in...
Many don’t know it, but Luigi Pirandello’s L’esclusa (The Excluded) represents the Agrigento-born author’s first true novel. My advice is to approach this book without thinking about the existentialism of Adriano Meis or the identity crisis of Vitangelo Moscarda, and to expect nothing. Because the truth is that this title stands out from all of Pirandello’s fiction for one very simple reason: its protagonist. A completely unconventional female protagonist, stronger than any other figure portrayed...
Catalan writer and artist Irene Solà’s debut novel, The embankment, despite its age—the Catalan original dates back to 2017—arrives in Italy with a surprisingly intact and original charm. Nothing in this novel is linear: the story unfolds through small, intimate episodes, a mosaic of intertwined narratives and tales, in which writing itself becomes the thread that ties together characters, old loves, eccentric families, places, and memories. At the center of the novel is Ada, who...
I pondered for a long time what sense there would be in writing about this novel, because so much has been written, commented on, and discussed. Then I recognized the importance this author has had for me over time, and how much I’ve fallen back in love with his writing, with his magnificent ability to address all aspects of humanity, and then I decided that, at least for me, it will always make sense to...
I liked the idea of starting the story of Lucy by the Sea with a rather bizarre image: ping-pong balls crashing into each other. In one passage of the novel, the protagonist recalls a film she saw at school as a girl, focusing in particular on the opening scene: many ping-pong balls bouncing against a blue background, colliding with each other, then separating and returning to their original positions, until they reach a moment of...
Halfway between a sweet classic tale of The Little Match Girl and a heartbreaking glimpse into contemporary life, Stargate is a book capable of striking all the right chords. How to describe it? How to talk about the power of Christmas magic? How to recount the delicate relationship between sisters? How to explain what it means to be forced to care for someone? How to talk about a burden so heavy that it weighs down...
“For us, there is no dialogue with death,” wrote Milo De Angelis.” There is only a cry. Death refuses to inhabit it. There is only this cry: a cry for help, of anger, of indignation, of amazement.” The theme of the farewell is the representation of the silence of a cry, which encompasses many things, above all loneliness, pain, and silence. A collection of verses that doesn’t lend itself to a quick read, but has...
On the occasion of Starnone’s new book, now available in all bookstores, I thought it appropriate to recall the novel of hers that has moved me most in recent years: Laces. A book that for me was much more than a simple reading experience: rather, I found myself walking through the four desolate walls of a family that I immediately felt inhabited the same room as me, and emerging a little unsteady, angry and at...
Published in 1849, Little Fadette is a short country tale combining fairytale elements with a surprisingly precise modern psychological analysis, perfectly capturing the turmoil and contradictions of the human soul. Here, the simplicity of rural life becomes the backdrop for still-timely reflections on individual freedom, Pirandello’s reflection of ourselves and others, and the vindication of feminine virtue. At the heart of the work, set in a remote 19th-century French valley, is the story of two...
Escape. Forced and necessary marriages. Sisterhood lost in pain. Healing music. The marble-like norms of the bourgeoisie. The mysterious thread that ties a life to many places and to no one. Trieste, Italy, and Egypt. Disillusionments. The inexorability of history. The great wars. Being women in the twentieth century. These are the luminous centers around which The Four Wieselberger Girls revolves, a moving memoir and a cruelly sincere tale that draws on all the leitmotifs...
