“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...
“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “Things happen, they don’t need us.” It’s truly difficult to separate the author’s biographical details from the powerful sadness that permeates these pages—the same sadness that drives us to greedily absorb every single word, to reach the end without missing a single detail, a single vibration, a single gesture. Rio de Janeiro, 1970s. “The temperature of this novel is always above 31ºC.” Little Camilo, a pale bourgeois in a dusty, impoverished neighborhood, witnesses...
“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...
“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:...
“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...
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...
“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...
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...
“Rome knew. It didn’t know where, how, or who, but it knew.” We heed the author’s warning at the beginning of the text: this is a book that, while drawing inspiration from true events, tells a fictional story. The connection to true history concerns the March 1944 attack on Via Rasella and the subsequent massacre at the Fosse Ardeatine; while the fictional stories are those of the various characters who, following parallel paths, will vicariously...
“Only the victors have a destiny. The irrelevant do not, they are deprived of it. They are not recognized.” A challenging read; to be honest, some complex concepts deserve a second period of reflection, which we intend to dedicate to in the future, to catch our breath from the depths of certain concepts. Philosophy, history, theology, and sociology intermingle in the author’s torrent of words, memories, and reasoning. This is not surprising, considering that the...
