A man arrives in Venice with the intention of committing suicide. He only has enough money left to pay for seven nights in a hotel overlooking the Rialto Bridge, but he expects to end his life long before the end of his stay. In the following days, the low water of the canals does not encourage him to pursue his goal and so he goes to the Lido, to find a setting more suited to his intent. He begins to dive into the sea when suddenly he perceives a silhouette in front of him that has the appearance of a mermaid… A couple’s love story ends over the course of eleven storms, which mark its different phases.. A doctor who administers the papilloma virus vaccine to girls who are starting to have their first sexual experiences falls in love with Giulia, a very young patient of his who secretly prostitutes herself from her parents… A writer perpetually uncomfortable with the tasks of everyday life marries Ludovica, a very practical woman in charge of a catering fleet. To obtain their wedding rings they decide to merge those of the woman’s grandparents, but this decision will give rise to a progressive metamorphosis of their balance as a couple… Two friends at the seaside try to pass the time by planning a series of pranks to the detriment of their neighbor , but when one of the two meets a girl at the beach bar, things change… In the midst of the pandemic, a man and a woman meet on the street and briefly separate in the entrance hall of a building. Thus they begin a clandestine acquaintance, but when the woman would like to deepen their knowledge, the man ends their relationship completely due to an unspeakable secret… A man begins to furtively grope a girl he meets in the Milan subway, but soon what was supposed to be a fleeting encounter turns into something much deeper…
After the quadrilogy of novels dedicated to the seasons, Luca Ricci returns to the form of the story with this one Gothic Pink, proposed by Massimo Onofri among the books selected for the 2024 Strega Prize. The seven stories that make up the collection investigate love in all its different nuances. They range from the love at first sight of a teenager who, also thanks to the summer heat, begins to feel the first sentimental thrills, to the obsession of an esteemed professional for a young woman with a double life, passing through the complex events of the couple relationships that arise and then they decline in mutual misunderstandings, in the inability to continue to fuel the initial passion within the dynamics of everyday life. In his presentation of the volume, Onofri defined Ricci as an “anatomical pathologist” of love and in fact this definition fully captures the approach that unites the various stories. The love that Ricci talks about is a drive that pushes the individual to deal with his own insecurities and which often takes the form of a real mania. A drive that Ricci investigates with an acute gaze free from moralism and at the same time with a style that lets us get under the skin of his characters, united by the same drive towards something that continues to slip out of their hands.
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