“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “What ever gave me the patience to persist until I learned to read the words of a book?” We wonder how this book isn’t required reading in every school. It deserves a place on children’s bookshelves between To Kill a Mockingbird and Fahrenheit 451; if you haven’t already, read it now, before they all burn them. Categorising Mime as science fiction seems risky, to say the least: reading this book today means...
I liked the idea of starting the story of Lucy by the Sea with a rather bizarre image: ping-pong balls crashing into each other. In one passage of the novel, the protagonist recalls a film she saw at school as a girl, focusing in particular on the opening scene: many ping-pong balls bouncing against a blue background, colliding with each other, then separating and returning to their original positions, until they reach a moment of...
Halfway between a sweet classic tale of The Little Match Girl and a heartbreaking glimpse into contemporary life, Stargate is a book capable of striking all the right chords. How to describe it? How to talk about the power of Christmas magic? How to recount the delicate relationship between sisters? How to explain what it means to be forced to care for someone? How to talk about a burden so heavy that it weighs down...
“On a scale of one to ten, how much did your parents love you?” Jack and Elizabeth are the two human beings we’ll be dealing with for exactly 720 pages; two protagonists we’ll have to explore and discover, and at a certain point we’ll have to side with, or worse yet: confront. Wait, don’t let the page count intimidate you, because more than a mountain to climb, the text is a sea to navigate. It’s...
Written by Ernesto Florio This review is available only in the original language _______________________________ Lettura impegnativa, ma addolcita, come sempre, dalla magia coinvolgente di Murakami. Anche questa volta gli ingredienti del realismo magico orientale ci sono tutti: personaggi strani che compiono azioni inspiegabili, avvenimenti curiosi e privi di una qualsiasi spiegazione logica, i velati riferimenti alla società giapponese, i gatti e la musica jazz, l’amore adolescenziale, la nostalgia e il destino come motori essenziali dell’esistenza...
“Some people think about it, some don’t. I’ve been thinking about it for thirty years. I try to prepare myself.” After reading, we found ourselves emotionally exhausted, perhaps still partly so. A book that sooner or later, in a form we cannot imagine, we will find ourselves writing. Each in their own way, each with the right amount of blank pages and unfinished sentences. How much do we really know our mother? Beyond her social...
“Caterina is alone. How alone, Maria’s bed next to her tells her. She falls asleep on it.” A book you’ll never put down: and it’s exactly what you’re looking for. A writer who emerges in the Italian cultural landscape like an island in the ocean, ready to rescue disillusioned shipwrecked sailors. A gripping story, but not because the plot is particularly intricate or full of twists and turns: quite the opposite. What keeps you glued...
“In the evening he read stories aloud to me […] and during the day he taught me how to do a handstand, because he absolutely wanted to make me see the world upside down.” Just a tip: open the book to the first page and read it aloud, steadily. We’re faced with a precise frame, like in a movie, and the camera frames, piece by piece, individual parts of a scene that we miraculously manage...
“And if no one tells me a story tonight, I know that one day, when I have all the words I need, I’ll tell them to myself.” Finalist of the XXVI edition of the Edoardo Kihlgren Opera Prima Literary Prize, the title does not lie: in the book there are fables and it talks about communism. We are in Albania, between the 80s and 90s, under the communist regime of Hoxa. Said like that, one...
“Restoring memory to news makes them less orphaned.” A hymn to the common good, to always acting thinking that every single choice in our daily life can have a positive impact on the community. Being honest with ourselves before others, acting based on what was once called common sense. Well, if we had to describe the book in a few words, they could only be these. In a double-track story, Sigfrido Ranucci offers us key...
