“The Judge and the Child” by Dario Levantino: book review

Land unresolved situations weaken the soul. They exhaust him. They are the thorn in your side that annoys and often alters your mood. You feel a sort of suspension that darkens you. You would like to have your feet on the ground, be certain of what happened because you understand it. You have all the elements to do it. When you are in the dark about important things that directly affect you, you flounder.

You think there is nothing that can comfort you from an intimate, private suffering. Indeed, you convince yourself that yours is the only truth, even if it is wrong. No one else has presented you with a different version of events, so you escape nothing because that nothing has taken hold in your mind. In a low voice you repeat to yourself the story you have constructed to save yourself from despair. One thing you understand immediately, instinctively, is that you have to resist, even with all the fear in your body, even locked in the dark amidst your anguish. The love you have for those who love you is the only freedom you have and no one can take it away from you, not even those who think they have put an end to your life. It will be your strength, the alarm clock that does not put memories to sleep. In the darkness everything slows down and amplifies. There is nothing to indicate time and it cannot stick anywhere when you know the end of everything, which is why you torture yourself with unsolved matters.

In The judge and the child Of Dario Levantino you end up in a piece of Italian history, ugly and terrible, which hurts just to think about, to remember. The story is that of judge Paolo Borsellino and little Giuseppe Di Matteo, kidnapped, strangled and dissolved in acid, both victims of the mafia. The ferocity of a chilling story has been transformed by the writer into a fairy tale. Strong concepts are accessible to everyone without diminishing anything. Indeed, through this literary choice, Levantino opens up human gaps that, in this specific story, few would be able to see because the cruelty is so strong and strong that it prevails over everything else. Borsellino, in paradise, helps the young Di Matteo to emerge from a sort of suspension that keeps him tied to his tragedy. He misses the most important thing, which his father couldn’t tell him. And Paolo Borsellino does it, reminding him that love is the only freedom.

The book is delicate. It has an extraordinary emotional power. The sensitivity with which the writer explores the emotions of the two protagonists is rare. The prose nails you to the story that stays in your heart.

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“The judge and the child” by Dario Levantino, Fazi editions. Dream Book.