“An era in which the worst deadly sins – pride, greed and envy – has been elevated to indispensable professional qualities.” Two brothers who grew up in the same family environment, with equal amounts of love received and the possibility of realizing their dreams, decide to embark on two opposite personal and professional lives. The first, Maurizio, a successful architect of international fame residing in Paris with his wife and daughter, until he decides to...
“Before we begin to forget, we must remember, we must begin to remember.” At the end of reading this book, you will be accompanied by only one feeling: regret for not having discovered both book and author sooner. The pages are similar to the ripples of a clear lake in which the pains of the world, the irreparable errors, the weight of responsibilities, the relationships between men and women and the questions that no one wants...
“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “The footprint of a life is everywhere.” A Malaysian anthropologist, transplanted to Norway, manages to overcome her husband’s sudden bereavement thanks to an unexpected encounter with the world of mushrooms. It seems that the community of readers really liked this book: it praises its delicacy and the unusual but refined way in which two apparently very distant themes, mourning and mycology, were brought together. We’re a bit perplexed. The book flows, as they...
“The chalk breaks in two and both halves fall to the ground.” In a modern Seoul, where communication runs on all channels, the world of a woman suffering from mutism resulting from a series of traumas comes into contact with that of a man blinded by a degenerative disease. Two sensorial voids that will also reveal themselves to be two internal voids, linked to open wounds that they cannot heal, and which at the slightest...
“Everyone wanted to die this year because from next year nothing new will be seen.” The main character of the tale is Nicola, who lived in a mental hospital for thirty-five years. Son of a difficult family situation, officially never born, because his father never decided to register him at the registry office (unlike his brothers), and a mother who was also locked up in a mental hospital, from an early age he will be...
“You will not see, gradually less and less, until you no longer see.” The Maneras, a wealthy couple from the Florentine area, who have everything in their life. Physical well-being, economic well-being, the possibility of being able to do anything in their life, until they decide to adopt a child to fill the only unbridgeable void, which over time risks becoming a black hole in their lives. A lack that is actually felt more by...
“Ladies never eat in public.” Quality. This is perhaps the only word capable of describing this book both for the quality of the text and for that of the physical object. A credit that must be divided in half between the writer and the publisher (Italian in this case); a special merit that we like to underline. The author takes us inside a modern fairy tale with an ancient smell, in which the reverberation of...
“For many years I thought we met in a sick time that wasn’t our time.” We are not sure if Concita De Gregorio is aware of how much her pen, with this kind of books, is able to leave a profound trace in Italian society, like a furrow that everyone should follow on a path towards greater awareness of their own limits and of its potential. We liked the book because it made us reflect,...
“Correcting Italian homework is a torment. […] read one, you’ve read them all. Three in a row can cause death.” If you have in mind the Starnone of his latest novels, forget him. Form, substance and times belong to another writer (in a figurative sense), the only point of contact between the pen of yesterday and that of today is the ironic component, typical of Neapolitan culture. The book is in fact the disarming transposition...
“Our ‘doing poorly’ students never come to school alone. An onion enters the classroom.” A lucid and honest analysis of the world of school. A smooth read, which won’t bore anyone: you can bet on it, readers, trust me. The book is divided into small chapters, as the title suggests, like small scenes of various situations, people, emotions encountered at school. An institution as ancient as it has been mistreated in recent years, and this...
