“FRIDAY DI-VERSO” “The nights are long and restless for the lonely, for the defenseless.“ What if the hundred years of solitude hadn’t passed in remote Macondo but a little further north, among the fjords of a dazzling and fabulous Denmark? Wars, lovers, apparitions, landscapes so poignant as to be unreal and yet there they are, in front of our eyes, bright. Hearts devoured by passions that are cold as ice and burn like ice; characters...
“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “No one has ever come out to say – Christ, I’m sick as hell – Nobody, do you understand?” The book opens with a long preface by Fernanda Pivano who with expert wisdom explains why and how Bukowski became a giant of literature: if this is what you want to learn more about, read her, which is better. Is she not nice to you? We too, although, far from any sympathy or antipathy, her merit as cultural ferryman...
“Could lies bring happiness?” Dichotomous review, one aspect we liked very much, another much less. An interesting contrast on which we stopped to think perhaps more than necessary, so much so that it took us two days to read the book, over a week to write these words. On the one hand the story told, on the other the author’s stylistic code. But let’s go in order. The story told is that of Olga, a...
“He always has the good face of one who is at peace with his own conscience.” Street stalls where used books are sold should always be blessed. Small sarcophagi of knowing where, if you have the passion to search like modern archaeologists, you will discover unique treasures, capable of making our eyes shine, and broaden our horizon of knowledge. So it was for us with this book and, in particular, for the edition we found....
“Nobody knows anything about time, but everyone enjoys giving it a voice.” Book dedicated and directed to the world of adolescents. The writer of this review has left their late teens for a few years, so not being in the target audience of the text, they may not have fully appreciated what a young person’s book of life will be (until they grow up). Read in an afternoon without excessive effort, the text is a...
“FRIDAY DI-VERSO” “The true form of blood is a chain, and its weight is unsustainable”. This is not a question: it is already a conclusion. And it’s in the title: it takes some character, to put a full stop and not a question mark. It gives us a bit of the weight of this young rookie, Gaia Giovagnoli, who with a hint of self-confidence writes this book to talk about roots, women, research, the unexpected. How...
“The lady was waiting for him at the door and pulling him in like a sip of water.” The story of Augusto Vanghetta, before and after rising to the public office of judge, is that of a miserable person who, due to a fortuitous series of events, and very few personal merits, manages to have social success. Annihilated by a continuous carnal desire to have as many women as possible, he even manages to organize...
“There is no doubt that all wisdom comes from anger.” The story is simple and intense. The narrator and protagonist of the story is that of a woman who is no longer very young, in a very small town along the border between Poland and the Czech Republic (but on the Polish side), where everyone knows each other and relations with neighbors are so dry as intense as the winter cold. The protagonist of the...
“We want the writer to stop living.” A book as short as it is intense. A journey without a well-defined destination, which forces you to play with your imagination and enter the author’s imaginative world with two feet. The reader is led to walk along a tightrope placed between the skyscrapers of rationality of his own conscience, without any safety net, where at risk it is not his life, but his vision of the world....
“You fall before you fall.” Following a fall from a horse, just outside the riding school he manages with his partner, Luca discovers that he is a man on the verge of an existential crisis. The few certainties on which he had built the second part of his life, in the countryside of central Italy, crumble. The physical pain of falling opens the doors to the latent pain of the soul. After a short period...
