“Maybe the most interesting tips are those that cannot be given in words.” “What do you mean?” “In the sense that they are like ascertainment germs of a delayed effect.”
Relations between parents and children are the most difficult to build. Misunderstandings, weaknesses, communicative gaps and recriminations undermine stability over the years. Giovanni, the main character of the book, is not an exception to this natural law of the world.
The long journey by car with his 16-year-old daughter, from Milan to the French Mediterranean coast, and beyond, it becomes an ideal situation in which to try to rebuild and strengthen a fragile family stability. The separation from his wife led Giovanni to be a half father, to which must be added a delated affective maturation, present throughout the story. Aware of having lost something in the growth of his daughter, he clumsily tries to recover with a flood of questions, advice, judgments and statements that have the opposite effect of distancing those who want to get closer. So true if you are dealing with a teenager, and every word spoken for a good purpose is interpreted in the worst way, because the advice given, no matter how right, is appreciated and understood only years later.
Moments of complicity alternate with those of unease and quarrel and reconciliation and half confession of weakness. Just when everything seems to turn for the worse, and the two find themselves stuck in a situation of objective difficulty, there will be the definitive turning point that will make them come closer, and understandable for Giovanni where life is leading him.
De Carlo’s lovers will find much of his style, and also of his personal life in this book. The long dialogues, with the descriptive part reduced to the bone, in the long run tire the reading, and lead the reader to take forced pauses, but is this not also a metaphor for family relationships?
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Andrea De Carlo, Pura Vita, Mondadori, Milano, 2001
