“To change things it is necessary to look at reality from above, try to move away.”
The importance and courage of making a decision without fear of having to regret it, being ready to embrace the future, and whatever may happen. Calabresi puts his experience as a journalist to good use, telling us stories of people next door who, with just one single choice, were able to change their lives, of the people they had close to, and potentially even of those who read the their testimony in this book.
A hymn to the life and hearts of men. The importance of moral rectitude, to make the world a better place to live, because we are all under one sky and on the same earth, however much we try to forget about it, and think about overpowering others.
Among the various stories told, the one that most struck us is certainly “clean water”. From the direct experience of the writer of these lines, we know very well the weight and difficulty of some decisions, especially when one is alone and the State seems to be completely absent. Dead-end situations, in which silent desperation seems to be the only life companion. To this must then be added the presence of a toxic love, which many women have difficulty recognizing and fighting, if not helped from the outside. We prefer not to anticipate anything else so as not to spoil your reading. However, we would like to recommend reading and analyzing this story in schools, so that children can grow up with positive heroes, and have positive examples to follow, making the right choice, even when this is the most complicated one and the price apparently overpriced.
Other testimonies in the text address issues in which, in different forms, many readers can find themselves. The total love of a young mother suffering from an incurable sea towards her children; the character and substance difficulties between two brothers in choosing which path to take in life, and much more.
We didn’t think we’d like the book so much. A breath of hope in mankind.
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Mario Calabresi, Una volta sola, Mondadori, Milano, 2022