“My family can be said to have never existed as such.”
A collection of short stories published posthumously, in which Piero Chiara’s lovers find all the contents of his narrative style: Lake Maggiore, the gossips of the village, the fixed time of provincial life, the lost memory, the cynicism of the human being. Starting from the twenties of the last century, the events reported arrive up to the very early eighties, to ideally identify with the author’s life.
Thirty stories that are old inside, but with dialogues and the descriptive power of Italian society, which manage to remain young outside. So much so that one wonders whether this is due to the author’s observational ability, or to the fact that in Italy nothing really changes; and wars pass, and fashions pass, and values pass, but the character of Italians remains immutable.
Perhaps this is precisely the added value that Piero Chiara manages to give to all his writings, however short, however surly, however annoying at times? That of making us reflect on our habits, on the environments in which we grew up, and on our way of relating to others, because we are all children of a province.
We have had more than a few favorite stories, but we like to remember the one related to “The Thieves of Milan”, which tell a lot about life, and about an Italy, that even in the midst of crime, had a certain innocence, which has now been lost.
We are not lovers of posthumous books, especially in the case of books not planned by the author, because we think that his final imprimatur is missing. This observation is even truer in this text, where the stories have been put together in a chronological sequence, which perhaps the writer would not have appreciated or, even worse, including stories that he would have preferred to let fall into oblivion. We cannot know. Despite this basic consideration, Piero Chiara is liked in all forms, and reading him is always a pleasure. For this reason we recommend it with ardor, perhaps not as a first reading with which to approach the author, but after having already chewed over some of his previous writings.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Piero Chiara, Di casa in casa, la vita, Mondadori, Milano, 1988