“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...
“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...
“I especially remember the cold, never a sunny day, I remember the snow and that we were without socks or gloves.” What is the best gift a grandchild can give to his grandmother? To be her legacy. Honoring the elderly, and their experience from which we all derive, when they are still among us, and not regretting them when it is too late. An important teaching. In this children’s book, Calabresi tells the story of...
The books chosen by Andrea Salonia This review is available only in the original language _________________________________________________________________________ Stefania Spanò: ma dove sei stata fino a oggi? Ricordo sempre con affetto commosso l’amico Alberto Garutti, artista e persona di raffinato intelletto, un cuore che lo occupava tutto; il Garutti e una delle sue opere pubbliche che più amo; queste le sue esatte parole: “tutti i passi che ho fatto nella mia vita mi hanno portato qui, ora”....
“My mother and father didn’t love me like they loved each other.” How much suffering can be in a family? How can it be addressed? How deep and intense must be the cohesion of the family, or the experience of its individual members, in order to be able to respond blow by blow to the challenges that life presents? The text talks about verbal and manipulative violence, which although they may seem very distant from...
“I have never understood happiness. The idea seemed obscene.” A symphony orchestra, perfectly in time, interpreting a score written just for it. Here is the relationship that binds the protagonists of this book. The author is instead the director, who explains to the reader his own setting of the story, dictating the times of the individual lines. The center of the story is Harmony, a small town in the southern United States, similar to many...
“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “For an hour he remained contemplating the great pearly clouds perpetually suspended above the horizon, and from their beauty he drew a sense of resignation that did not allow his reason to examine.” We wander through the shelves full of new products on which out of intellectual humility (or decency) we do not judge but which clearly have little to tell us. Unexpected, there, in a little corner, mild and modest, a small blue...
“The passengers are recognized by the excitement that invades them.” It’s not narrative, it’s not poetry, at times it’s a real travel story but in verses that alternate with lines and images ready to show the reader what is explained by the words, as if it were possible to grasp them… It is a journey by sea, from Brindisi to Greece, and – let’s say it better – to ancient Greece, therefore not only a...
“I live like sole, on the seabed. My peers, on land: what can we say to each other?” Teresa is a forty-seven-year-old teacher, stuck in the role of daughter for too long. She lives with her parents in a village never specified, subjected to the limit of perpetual humiliation by her mother Maria, and invisible to the eyes of Alzheimer’s which affects her father Piero. An environment, family and country, which tightens the deadly embrace...
