“Only that the doors often remain open when they should remain closed.” The story tells of Elisa, a very young girl who, after the death of her elderly aunt, her guardian, accepts the brief hospitality of her last surviving relative, her cousin Filippo. At Filippo’s home, she is welcomed by her sister-in-law Malvina, and a host of characters crowd their home during long evenings, where they discuss art, politics, society, and any topic on which...
“Some people think about it, some don’t. I’ve been thinking about it for thirty years. I try to prepare myself.” After reading, we found ourselves emotionally exhausted, perhaps still partly so. A book that sooner or later, in a form we cannot imagine, we will find ourselves writing. Each in their own way, each with the right amount of blank pages and unfinished sentences. How much do we really know our mother? Beyond her social...
“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...
“I knew a secretary who only knew how to lick envelopes and stamps, yet she became indispensable […].” Approaching the text was not easy. The book calls to attention all potential and future readers; it forces them to patiently interpret, with a touch of wit and irony; and it condemns them to follow the protagonist’s ebb and flow of thoughts and reflections: we are in his head, and we must deal with this from the...
“If they had loved me, maybe I would have been beautiful too.” We weren’t ready to read such a beautiful book. We weren’t physically or emotionally ready. A full-throttle dive into melancholy, with no desire to climb back up. Some passages moved us like we hadn’t in a long time; but this shouldn’t make you think it’s a sad book. It’s a text capable of opening the heart like a child, letting in all the...
“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “We are equal, finally, equal, alien, alone.” Ursula Kroeber Le Guin—a woman who, to quote Whitman, contains multitudes. Not only because of her immense literary output, but also because of her exuberant, exuberant wealth of thought, capable of developing as many insights in a single book as an entire library. Each word is the seed of a concept that will be free to germinate in the soil of our minds: the imagery Le...
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...
“VENERDÌ RE-VERSO” “Imagination does not mean lying.” This is a book for children; this is a book for adults; it’s a book for teachers; it’s a book for dreamers: this is Daniel Pennac, ladies and gentlemen. Not all of the French author’s works reach such heights, yet this book should be read and reread at all ages, laughing (sometimes bitterly) and reflecting on many small, important themes, without seeking “easy solutions.” As always, Pennac...
“…the idea belongs to whoever develops it, and I will pretend I never had this idea of becoming a startupper.” The book is a collection of stories (we can’t say whether they’re autobiographical or free reworkings of stories the author heard), some of which appeared as newspaper articles, others unpublished, written during his long stay in California. This long period allowed Masneri to gather life experiences and testimonies that help us understand the American world,...
“Ideas don’t die, sometimes they sleep and then wake up stronger than before.” A well-known book, its fame is directly proportional to the number of people who have actually read it from cover to cover. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that prompted us to re-read this classic. The protagonist is Edmond Dantès, a very young sailor who is unjustly imprisoned on the eve of his promotion to captain of a ship and his...
