“Next to me in the bed his empty space, which leaves me nowhere to cling to today.”
The protagonist of the novel is Willa, an Australian lady and her life, apparently peaceful butwhich is actually a constant revolution of feelings, joys and sorrows. Thanks to a trick by the writer that we do not want to anticipate, we come into contact with Willa at different stages of her life: first an 8-year-old girl, then a 34-year-old adult woman and finally a 93-year-old woman. From the broken narrative of similar days lived by Willa in the different ages of her existence, we enter a virtuous game of reflections and second thoughts, which put the reader with his back to the wall.
We can understand the book well if we take human emotions and their evolution in time and space as a reference point. Time is what in every phase of life makes us look back with regret for the past moments, the occasions that we did not want, or could, savor correctly, not perceiving that this would be the moment of immense joy that would be there. stayed inside forever. Space, on the other hand, is what we always try to subtract from the emotions that we decide not to live in full, for empty fears that we will only realize when it is too late, in flashes of lucidity when we are too old to be understood.
If these are the sentimental coordinates for which we really appreciated the book, a different speech must be made for the style of writing. Short and syncopated phrases, in perfect Anglo-Saxon style, which sometimes interrupt the pleasure of reading, as if you were forced to drink a glass of good wine in sips that do not even make your lips wet. Of course, as we usually say, this is the modern way of writing, but we think that giving more breath to the words, expanding the lexical extension of some crucial passages of the story, would have given the right added value to the feelings on which they are built. the characters, starting with the protagonist Willa, in all phases of her life.
A pleasant story, like the pastel colors of the cover, in perfect harmony with the sweetness it contains.
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Tabitha Bird, A lifetime of impossible days, Biplane, Monza, 2020
Original edition: A lifetime of impossible days, Penguin Random House Australia, 2019
