“FRIDAY DI-VERSO” I listened as in a dream to the roar of the waves and I knew that I would pass the test of my youth and be forgiven. Some books, quick to read, full of life yet airy, fresh, might be worth describing in pictures rather than words. An image that may suggest, perhaps, the state of mind of those who, having closed the book, after the last page, also close their eyes, to let...
“Another empty day unfolded before him.” Go to the bookstore, look for this book and read it. In case your reference bookstore does not have it, book it and await its arrival. We write it directly, without the possibility of misunderstanding, because this book causes physical pleasure to reading, both for the story told and for the writing. A caress for lovers of the Italian language, which should be read at school to make the...
“Only dead fish go with the current.” Sweet, attentive, unscrupulous, acute. A text that is read with pleasure and that makes you happy in reading. In the same way the protagonist (and how could she not be otherwise?), Margherita Dolcevita has a nickname that characterizes (at least in Italian language) her both emotionally and physically, the usual clever pun that the author has accustomed us to in his books. Margherita is a fourteen-year-old teenager, full...
“FRIDAY DI-VERSO” None of these things exist. You have no reason to believe me … the temperature rises, it is completely unpleasant, but the frog has weakened, it no longer has the strength to go out. If it had been thrown into the already boiling water, it would have jumped out with a thrust of the kidneys. Do you know the metaphor of the frog in the hot pot? Chomsky used it to describe the individual...
“When you are sad you need to feel your pain made into music.” Book of memoirs, in which the writer recounts her experience as a patient in a US psychiatric clinic in the late 1960s. A leap into the void crossed after a perhaps incorrect diagnosis of personality disorder, following an alleged attempt to commit suicide. The stay at the McLean private hospital will last for eighteen months, during which the writer lives in a...
“Things that don’t matter to some can be as terrible as death to others.” Book divided into two stories detached from each other Hard Boiled and Hard Luck (hence the title H/H). Although indirectly in contrast to the setting, characters and family relationships, the background theme links the two stories: the world of the afterlife, and the attempt to move forward despite the inner pain. In the first story, the protagonist is a young girl...
“Every anarchist was seen as dangerous just for being an anarchist. Ideology was dangerous, not the man.” Interesting historical monograph.To read the text, a good smattering of Italian history of the beginning of the century is recommended, otherwise you run the risk of being stranded after the first ten pages have passed. Given the importance of the city of MIlan, the history of the Milanese anarchist world is consequently that of the entire peninsula. Milan...
“FRIDAY DI-VERSO” “…surprised about how long I’d lived, still unsure how it was going to end.” Perhaps a review would be needed for each chapter. Or those scholastic questions of understanding the text, for once without the obscene hassle of a “right” or “wrong”. Because this, gentlemen, is a book that poses many questions. Starting from the choice of a population of the undergrowth as the protagonist: is it a (black) fairy tale? a satire? an...
“That old priest, not only preaches the faith of God to women and children, as his profession requires, but he himself believes in it.” Warning for the reader: this review is written by an entire editorial staff totally enchanted by Ignazio Silone’s prose. Underrated, forgotten, left to tan on second-hand stalls, for us Silone’s books are works of art to have at home without arguing. The protagonist of the story, Luca Sabatini, returns to his...
“The problem is not so much what happens to us, but how we live and process what happens.” Admission of guilt: we approached the reading of this text with some reticence because we were not convinced by the format, by the subject dealt with, by the title. In short, closed in the highest tower of a castle built on clouds of preconceptions. We had to change our minds. It is no coincidence that we decided...
