Finding a book that amazes with its symbolic sophistication is not easy. The title, The unicorn girland the cover in fact refer to something completely different from the content of the plot, identifying and interpreting its meaning here is the most sublime of literary games.
Considering that the discovery of the book occurred purely by chance while scrolling through the Google home page on my smartphone, we can actually say that this time the algorithm really hit the spot on the object of interest.
The pen of Giulia Sara Miori in fact it manages to formally condense a story with a fast-paced narrative rhythm in which the setting and characters are described in a plastic and essential way almost as if it were a form of film screenplay.
The peculiarity of his style in this book is to skilfully structure and prepare the immersive effect of the reader in a disturbing and alienating dimension which, orienting the story-telling process in an introspective descent in which the consciousness of the narrating instance filters itself and the reality through the re-emergence of the subconscious, surrounds the soul of the protagonist with an aura of deep and dark hallucinatory restlessness, which emerges and comes to life in a devastating way from a submerged experience and a present that are not resolved and rejected.
This type of description of consciousness can be identified in the context of psychiatric studies such as maladaptive daydreaming and the better known paranoid personality syndrome. But obviously here it only functions as a modern and – let me say – original narrative frame, which however could confuse the reader less accustomed to the game of paroxystically metaphorical interpretation of the text, anchored to a mechanical and dynamic surface reading of the events.
The protagonist is Mr. Cattaneo, the prisoner.
Wanting to find narrative references, one could articulate his personality by adding a triptych of film characters. Being a character without a first name and blinded by the refinement of a candor that attempts to redefine his actions in search of isolation from reality and clarification about himself, the first reference for our nameless prisoner is precisely Mr. Nobody , The Mr NobodyJared Leto, in Jaco Van Dormael’s film, in which we witness his redemption arc following his punishment for not wanting to make choices that would have defined and given value to his existence.
Life depresses him because he is unable to recognize that he must “learn to swim” that is, living fully by making choices if you want a life that has meaning.
Furthermore, in the film scenographic white is symbolically used exactly as in the book. The second as existential damnation could be the serial character of Rachel, played by Claire Danes in Fleishman Is in Troublewho disappears without leaving a trace of herself, abandoning family and work in the throes of a very strong nervous breakdown, the effect of a present in which she no longer recognizes herself.
The third is the protagonist of Shame, film directed by Steve McQueen, in which Brandon Sullivan, played by Michael Fassbender, follows a path of profound discomfort and bewilderment dictated by his sexual addictions and lack of ethical and sentimental values.
The predominant themes of the prisoner’s torment are uncultivated love, the sense of emptiness of one’s present, the moderate alienation of a life without goals, and professional dissatisfaction in which work is not rewarding and a program of consumerism is respected on a weekly basis. sporting and sexual regulated by mere hormonal drives.
An email starts the conspiracy against one’s human condition awaiting trial:
Deep down, we all want to be judged.
A character will say to our prisoner. Judgment in search of attributing meaning to his torment and vice versa, an initiatory step in the process of mourning oneself or returning to life, like that of the girl seen outside the house and fished out of the waters of the memory of the trauma. She is unrecognizable. Nothing is known about her.
Is it really her? The unicorn girl, from whose amorphous face one cannot interpret the story of her destiny, as a modern “Inconnue de la Seine”, of which one could interpret that she is unknown to herself, like the person who wears a mask, who hides a life drowned in the memory of regret, and at the same time is immersed in the chaotic present; a becoming surrendered to what could have been and what was not, ensuring that everyone becomes unknowable to the world and unknown to themselves.
There is no redemption for the prisoners, only awareness of a submerged person who overflows and mixes the present, contaminating it without appeal. Damned souls who cannot find a place in a world in which the incommunicability of their own existential stigma, the oppression of social labels and the sexual bewilderment dictated by their own repressed or poorly expressed instincts, form a prison with no escape.
I like to think that the prisoner in this novel involuntarily traces a common thread with another novel, that is, that it is a prequel, the forerunner of the fugitive, also nameless, who lands on the island in Morel’s invention, a masterpiece by Adolfo Bioy Casares from 1940. The protagonist therefore evolves in this new introspective and surreal dimension, delving into other themes: philosophical, sentimental and existential, always set in a paranoid frame of social anxiety deriving from the fear of discovering one’s own presence on the island. The fugitive is a prisoner in his mind.
Finally we take up the surface, i.e. the cover; this graphic combination could indicate the accommodation in this (new?) fluid world in whose game the rules are in flux, definitively breaking down the pre-established roles and identities.
The armchair is inviting. Please, sit down. Enjoy the reading.
