THE FIRST REVIEW OF THE MONTH WILL BE DEDICATED TO THE NEW VOICE: “MONDAY DI-VERSO” “Es regnet so stark und es ist so schön, wenn es so stark regnet.” Dirty words. Clean words. What can a word dirty? A word is a construction of sounds, associations, meanings. It has its own physical consistency, a different flavor for each mouth. There is a love for words that not everyone understands because not everyone is used to...
“Sometimes I think that the real curse of my continent is not so much poverty, but the fact that when you are poor you only think of yourself.” Guidrigildo, a word of Lombard origin formed by wer (man, in Latin vir) and geld (price, value), is the sum of money that represented the allowance to be paid to the relatives of the killed person. So here is the whole book enclosed in a single word...
“The happy ending must be conquered, not invented.” Maria Grazia Calandrone entrusts us with a very private and intimate story; with bitter notes from the very first pages. It is the story of a mother-daughter relationship consisting of a very deep love during the golden years of childhood and enormous chaos in the years to come. It is not a simple story told by a daughter, but a troubled relationship with an adoptive mother who...
“…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,...
Written by Dimitri A. Piccolillo (Bookseller Mondadori Bookstore Barona) This review is available only in the original language. _________________________________________________________________________ Giuseppe Catozzella è un autore fuori dal comune, sia per la quantità di libri finora realizzati, sia per l’estrema cura e passione che dedica ad ognuno di essi, condita da un’umiltà nella ricerca che difficilmente si ritrova in scritti del genere. Il suo ultimo romanzo è frutto di una ricerca approfondita nelle profondità dello spirito italiano....
“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,...
Written by Dimitri A. Piccolillo (Bookseller at Mondadori Bookstore Barona) Translated by Arianna Acquafredda _________________________________________________________________________ Giuseppe Culicchia’s last novel tells the story of the Red Brigade Walter Alasia from an unusual point of view: it’s the same Giuseppe who, with skill and sensitivity, reconstructs the events, wisely mixing current events, testimonials and, above all, personal vicissitudes. Besides the necessary historical and political frameworks (that not everyone could know inside out and for this reason, personally,...
