“To that cry of love, with what voice to answer?” “Dear peace” is a shared pain; the story of two sisters forced to act as a shield against a childhood cut short by a life of orphans even though they are not. The narrating voice is that of Maddalena, who lives in Paris, far from her sister Nina; little Nina who needs protection and love whose only “place” she always manages to take refuge in...
“An aunt had told him that his mother was sick and when he had asked about what, his aunt had said to him: mentally ill”. Every now and then, it happens to everyone, we find a book in our hands by chance and something suggests we move it to the top of the notorious “To Be Read” stack. So it was for this NN, open between the skeptic and the lazy on this sentence: “In...
“…this is how the House of Memories opens, but too late for “I” to get inside.” Who are we really? No one better than the places in which we live, or have lived, can tell us better. They are there, motionless or semi-mobile, looking at us, welcoming us, watching us grow, live and observe us as we sometimes leave. “The book of houses” is for us a successful literary experiment to tell the story of...
“If you follow the butterflies, you always get to the other side of the world.” A witty, wide-ranging novel about the whys of life, faced with naturalness, analyzed in the warm wind of common sense. The story told is extremely simple, but not uncomplicated for this. Accompanied by the love for hematology, a group of young boys, driven by the desire to conquer the world, leave home for a few days to go in search...
“What is the precise moment when we discover that flying is the prerogative of birds and butterflies?“ It looked like beauty but it was not: it was pain, suffering, rejection of oneself and of others, admiration mixed with envy and hatred; it looked like youth and instead it was bullying, prevarication and violence; it looked like the success and glory of one’s career and instead it was escape and tears and the constant search for...
“Going back to my parents’ house doesn’t help.” We started reading this book knowing little about the world of cosplay, and all the parallel reality that spinning around it. For the few who, like us, do not know it, cosplay is a worldwide phenomenon, for which young enthusiasts (but also not so young now) interpret characters from video games or from the manga world, creating costumes and choreography. The book tells the story of Alice,...
“Those who are able to control their sexual instincts can only be considered as belonging to a superior race.” Sociological work of impact starting from the title. A concrete commitment to try to shed light on one of the most delicate and controversial issues within the Catholic world: the relationship between sex (and sexuality) and the clergy. Although celibacy is a rule of canon law, and therefore easily repealed because it is not directly connected...
“Maybe I’ll always be just this: one who has gone away.” Viola Ardone tells us a little known reality, but which is part of Italian history: from an initiative of the Communist Party, trains loaded with children depart from the South, torn from the misery in which they live in their homes, which will be temporarily entrusted to some Emilian families. We are in Italy in 1946, a country that must be rebuilt after the...
“My daughter writes well, but not in an appropriate way, she wastes fine words on petty things.” The story told is that of an invisible family in contemporary Italy, and by invisible we mean the last of the last. Forced to survive on the edge of legality to have a roof over her head and food to put on the table. A situation of total precariousness from which there seems to be no way out,...
“Serve the god of money or succumb, there is no other rule.” George Orwell’s novel set in the 1930s and autobiographically inspired by the period in which, working as a teacher, he wrote “Penniless in Paris and London”. The story unfolds following the reflections of nearly 30-year-old Gordon Comstock, the latest bankrupt in a bankrupt family. Gordon has declared war on money and is desperate to survive by escaping his clutches. The only perceptible result:...
