Over time, I have often thought about desires, in general what it means to have them and, in particular, what it means to desire a family, children, a domestic life and what the opposite means, not wanting children, choosing another type of life.
When we talk about desires, especially the desires of women, it seems like we are talking about something irrevocable, solid: you want something or you don’t want it. You want to be a mom or you don’t. Do you want to focus on your career or do you want a family: there is no room for doubts or hesitations.
The protagonist of Things that aren’t told she is not so much a character as a person, and as such she is consumed by doubts. Lattanzi chooses to tell his journey, extremely painful because extremely real, of choice to be a mother first and foremost scary realities of assisted reproduction.
I say “chooses” because as he reiterates several times throughout the novel, telling is a choice, even if sometimes the only one possible. Page after page, word after word, she promises herself and us to be sincere, and therefore she is to the point of exhaustionuntil she told us everything, even the things that are not told: a pregnancy that is not a source of happiness, or at least not only, it is a part of life and like all parts of life it is complex, unattainable, painful, incredible .
A relationship that is not only a source of comfort but a real relationship, therefore tender, at times terrible, spiteful, full of silence and love.
And, finally, a life that is not just told, or to be told, but is a life lived, and therefore as such, frightening and very sweet.
After finishing it, I felt like picking up the phone and thanking Antonella Lattanzi, even though I don’t know her, for having transformed his life into literatureeven in the most scabrous facets, and for having told that fear that – almost – no one ever talks about: that our desires, whether right or wrong, will one day become real.
