“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...
“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...
“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...
“Until yesterday, who would have ever thought that I would start working?” Aldino is the protagonist of the book: the diminutive already tells us a lot about him. A partially immature thirty-three year old, incapable of leaving behind a youth that had grown out of time. Without a precise plan in life, other than to live from day to day, and spend late nights in the less recommended places of a Milan that is preparing...
