“People think one thing is true to the core.” Can an American novel excite and involve an Italian reader after more than sixty years? If it’s a masterpiece, yes! A modern classic of world literature. Get ready to read the story of a boy, a young teenager, to enter his head, with his language and his way of coding and reading the world. Get ready to immerse yourself in his thoughts, to filter everything through...
“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “There is something about this hotel that disturbs me and holds me back. I do not understand well. I don’t try to understand better.” We don’t understand well. Let’s not try to understand better – what keeps us in this book. And yet: we are there, even if upset. Like in a dream, we don’t know how we got here, perhaps a quote, an epiphany, an involuntary movement of the soul and here...
“Power cannot be managed by a village clan, which arrived there without knowing it.” From 2011 to 2022 we have witnessed constitutional forcing, reinterpretations of roles and prerogatives that were once unthinkable. Palace games and partially revealed backroom deals, which Lucia Annunziata tries to reconstruct through the direct testimony of the protagonists of that season, revelations, confidences and ex-post analyses. An approach that we greatly appreciated because, despite going into the detail of the reconstruction,...
“Life, after one dies, is called memory.” A book that is at times autobiographical (at least this is our feeling) in which the author’s pen is appreciated more than the story. The writing is a pleasure on the palate, almost a sin of gluttony, which makes you want to read again and again, but after all, knowing the stylistic register of the writer, we would have been surprised otherwise. Advice for teachers: although well written,...
“My mother and father didn’t love me like they loved each other.” How much suffering can be in a family? How can it be addressed? How deep and intense must be the cohesion of the family, or the experience of its individual members, in order to be able to respond blow by blow to the challenges that life presents? The text talks about verbal and manipulative violence, which although they may seem very distant from...
“I have never understood happiness. The idea seemed obscene.” A symphony orchestra, perfectly in time, interpreting a score written just for it. Here is the relationship that binds the protagonists of this book. The author is instead the director, who explains to the reader his own setting of the story, dictating the times of the individual lines. The center of the story is Harmony, a small town in the southern United States, similar to many...
“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “For an hour he remained contemplating the great pearly clouds perpetually suspended above the horizon, and from their beauty he drew a sense of resignation that did not allow his reason to examine.” We wander through the shelves full of new products on which out of intellectual humility (or decency) we do not judge but which clearly have little to tell us. Unexpected, there, in a little corner, mild and modest, a small blue...
“What if life was a lot simpler than it is?” The quote we chose from the book contains its ultimate meaning. The value of life. Knowing how to appreciate the small daily annoyances as a blessing, and not take anything for granted. Be aware, at any age, of the riches you possess; and this can be expressed in the areas of health, family affection, a warm bed. The author tells his personal story, with the...
“It had never occurred to me that human actions could have a limit, not even when it was mom’s turn.” We’ve discovered a new book to put on your must-read-before-you-die list. When we bought it we didn’t think that it would enter every single cell of our body, to then make us shine with life. Friendship, love, moral values, guilt, memory pride, regrets, and more, dosed with a delicacy that moves the reader. The protagonist...
“The lighthouse keepers are tough men, nailed to a rock. Absolute monarchs of their territory, and at the same time, recluse in confinement.” A fascinating book, able to tell the experience of a motionless journey, in which what counts most is not the distance traveled, the monuments visited or the languages listened to, but the possibility of seeing life with other eyes, far from the chaos and from the modernity to which we are accustomed....
