“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “There was something unpleasant in that wait, it was as if everything around him was about to explode.” The writer of this review has an (unhealthy?) passion for stories about the wickedness of children. One of the best novels on the subject (leaving aside Golding) is “Nothing” by Janne Teller: we recommend it. Let’s be clear, ours isn’t a morbid curiosity; rather, it’s about dissecting that part of the self that is then...
“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “Expecting mirages to take us where we want to go is madness.” Morgana is the deceptive fairy who distorts reality through strange visions, making hallucinations something we must necessarily confront. The treatise on imaginary ethnography that Celati presents us does more or less the same thing: it forces us to immerse ourselves in the lives of a nonexistent people, describing their habits, stories, and characteristics, mocking a certain colonial descriptivism and leaving...
“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “I’ve always been an architect of problems.” The first thing to say is that Ilaria Camilletti was born in 2005. The second thing to say is that this book isn’t beautiful despite, or even though, the author is twenty years old. It’s simply beautiful. It’s important to say that. Obviously, “beautiful” is an adjective that requires qualification, otherwise we wouldn’t be here, but for now. Ilaria has just finished her high school diploma,...
“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...
“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “‘I have always wanted to know something about you poets […] What do you do all day??“ Belfast and the 1990s. Two friends and a lot of bombs. Sarcasm and sweetness; so much anger; so much love. And a cat. We’re rereading this book after ten years: we didn’t remember it being so long, so full, and we did remember—yes, that—laughing a lot. What makes this novel so great? Because there’s grandeur in...
“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “They had expectations towards the other person, I only had expectations towards myself.” This book cannot be left unmentioned. To readers, non-readers, people who happen to pass by. In the Italian literary scene, it’s a mine that explodes, sparing no one. Without anything that could even remotely be mistaken for hypocrisy, without discounts, without winks. To discuss it, we must begin with the style: as another author—who is, first and foremost, a careful...
“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “Things happen, they don’t need us.” It’s truly difficult to separate the author’s biographical details from the powerful sadness that permeates these pages—the same sadness that drives us to greedily absorb every single word, to reach the end without missing a single detail, a single vibration, a single gesture. Rio de Janeiro, 1970s. “The temperature of this novel is always above 31ºC.” Little Camilo, a pale bourgeois in a dusty, impoverished neighborhood, witnesses...
“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “We are equal, finally, equal, alien, alone.” Ursula Kroeber Le Guin—a woman who, to quote Whitman, contains multitudes. Not only because of her immense literary output, but also because of her exuberant, exuberant wealth of thought, capable of developing as many insights in a single book as an entire library. Each word is the seed of a concept that will be free to germinate in the soil of our minds: the imagery Le...
“VENERDÌ RE-VERSO” “Imagination does not mean lying.” This is a book for children; this is a book for adults; it’s a book for teachers; it’s a book for dreamers: this is Daniel Pennac, ladies and gentlemen. Not all of the French author’s works reach such heights, yet this book should be read and reread at all ages, laughing (sometimes bitterly) and reflecting on many small, important themes, without seeking “easy solutions.” As always, Pennac...
“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “Now everything was different. Nothing was pre-established anymore, everything had to be redone.” Many people these days may have read “Confini di classe” (Feltrinelli, 2025), the small collection of essays by Lea Ypi, in which the author technically but passionately addresses the double knot that links the class question to that of citizenship. Reading “Libera”, her autobiographical novel published a few years ago, perhaps helps to understand how one can arrive at...
