“She has entered a part of herself where she is absolute, she has a sword between her teeth.” Loss. Confusion. Fear. Courage. And: hope. You are opening a book that is a flow of lava, dense, incendiary, inexorable. Starting from the writing: no quotation marks, compact paragraphs, syncopated scene changes. All downhill, dragged down the mountain, we would call it “crescendo” if it didn’t resemble a precipice. It’s as if we’re waiting for a turning point that...
“Breathe. You are alive.” For those who know the author, and have also read her previous works, this book can be defined as what in television jargon is called a spin off, that is, where the protagonists previously appeared in other stories as secondary characters. Be careful though, because the ideal link between the books stops here, the rest of the story is a separate story, with its own beginning and end. The two protagonists...
“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “…and then I held in my hand a story that was no longer true.” The “Re-Verso” Fridays are dedicated to little gems from a few years ago; this time we want to highlight a more recent one: “The shadow of the volcano” by Marco Rossari. Not a rediscovery therefore, for some, we hope, a new happy meeting. Reading this book was a summer. Not a summer of beers and fluttering flowered dresses, no, rather of...
“Before we begin to forget, we must remember, we must begin to remember.” At the end of reading this book, you will be accompanied by only one feeling: regret for not having discovered both book and author sooner. The pages are similar to the ripples of a clear lake in which the pains of the world, the irreparable errors, the weight of responsibilities, the relationships between men and women and the questions that no one wants...
“The chalk breaks in two and both halves fall to the ground.” In a modern Seoul, where communication runs on all channels, the world of a woman suffering from mutism resulting from a series of traumas comes into contact with that of a man blinded by a degenerative disease. Two sensorial voids that will also reveal themselves to be two internal voids, linked to open wounds that they cannot heal, and which at the slightest...
“You will not see, gradually less and less, until you no longer see.” The Maneras, a wealthy couple from the Florentine area, who have everything in their life. Physical well-being, economic well-being, the possibility of being able to do anything in their life, until they decide to adopt a child to fill the only unbridgeable void, which over time risks becoming a black hole in their lives. A lack that is actually felt more by...
“Ladies never eat in public.” Quality. This is perhaps the only word capable of describing this book both for the quality of the text and for that of the physical object. A credit that must be divided in half between the writer and the publisher (Italian in this case); a special merit that we like to underline. The author takes us inside a modern fairy tale with an ancient smell, in which the reverberation of...
“I especially remember the cold, never a sunny day, I remember the snow and that we were without socks or gloves.” What is the best gift a grandchild can give to his grandmother? To be her legacy. Honoring the elderly, and their experience from which we all derive, when they are still among us, and not regretting them when it is too late. An important teaching. In this children’s book, Calabresi tells the story of...
The books chosen by Andrea Salonia This review is available only in the original language _________________________________________________________________________ Stefania Spanò: ma dove sei stata fino a oggi? Ricordo sempre con affetto commosso l’amico Alberto Garutti, artista e persona di raffinato intelletto, un cuore che lo occupava tutto; il Garutti e una delle sue opere pubbliche che più amo; queste le sue esatte parole: “tutti i passi che ho fatto nella mia vita mi hanno portato qui, ora”....
“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...
