“If you follow the butterflies, you always get to the other side of the world.”
A witty, wide-ranging novel about the whys of life, faced with naturalness, analyzed in the warm wind of common sense.
The story told is extremely simple, but not uncomplicated for this. Accompanied by the love for hematology, a group of young boys, driven by the desire to conquer the world, leave home for a few days to go in search of a villa, surrounded by a fantastic legend according to which butterflies and insects were bred of a rare beauty.
However, this is not a house like any other, but a hospice where wealthy elderly people, having reached the end of their journey on earth, await the time of passing in harmony and serenity.
From the meeting of the group of young people with that of the elderly, the contradictions of life arise, in which one faces the melancholy of old age and the bitter joy of youth. In this regard, the wonderful passage in which to pass the time, you decide to play a game similar to steal the flag, with updated rules, weighing the path traveled up to that moment. Masterful intuition of the author, like many others in the book, which we try not to tell.
We think we can define the book as a choral text, but not in the sense of written by several hands, but in the one where it is impossible to find a simple protagonist. Yes, there are characters that are stronger and more structured than others, but not to the point of becoming the sole protagonist. The story is structured in such a way as to suggest that there is a continuity, in which we go into the story of the individual characters out of the context told here, even better if in their past.
Do we recommend it? Absolutely yes, and we say it with the spirit of those who were not very convinced of the choice of reading made. We advise you to continue reading beyond the first thirty pages, because it is a text that first sows and then grows and blooms, it only asks for the patience to wait before being able to enjoy its fruits. In short, deciding to abandon it after the first few pages would prevent you from discovering the fantastic world of life.
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Fulvio Ervas, Little book of fantastic entomology, Bompiani, Milano, 2021
