Five novels, four dedicated in various ways to the knowledge of oneself, of others, of love. Are the books recommended by the editorial staff for June: you can find them below, with the cover photo and details, reviewed by the journalists of the Giornale di Brescia.
If you want more choices, find it here is the issue of the May columnand so on you can click on the links that take you back.
We’ll see you again in mid-July.
«Love at the window»
by Flavio Soriga
The cover of Love at the Window
(Bompiani, 2024, pp. 176, 15 euros, ebook 9.99 euros)
There are authors we wait at the window. Sometimes for years, longing for a return to the bookstore. Flavio Soriga is one of these. Not as prolific as we would like (the “ci” is a vulgar attempt to cloak in plurality an arrogant claim which is first and foremost mine, I confess), to the point that sometimes the thought of taking a virtual pen and paper and asking for an account of the prolonged silences comes to mind even to the most patient of readers. This moment appears all the happier when the Sardinian writer is even in the bookshop with two novelties.
For the little ones there is “Mr. Sausage”, the story of the meeting between a little girl and a hedgehog which is much more than a backdrop to the climatic upheaval, which even very young readers can thus grasp through the magic of narration, in its more concrete implications, dispelling the idea that it is an invention by adults to make them consume less water when brushing their teeth.
For everyone else there is a collection of five stories of which the title anticipates the common thread: “Love at the window”. Five stories through which Soriga questions us on the limits of love, keeps us hanging from that thin thread that binds the other to us but which often ends up turning into the matter of the spider that weaves the web of desperation around us. Or on the contrary, of an unpredictable sense and hope. The author guides us through different manifestations of love, expressed in the Roman suburbs as in the light of the Mediterranean. The love of a friend, of a parent sometimes, or of lovers, or even of aunts and nieces, of abandoned women and children left alone to contemplate the voids left by little-known fathers. And love is also the recurring one for a land (which not by chance tastes like Sardinia). Microworlds, united by the cathartic and destructive, formidable and damned, lacerating and pure power of feeling, whether blossomed or lost. How much more human and simple, that the author of Uta rattles off, not without irony, through the story of small and simple, everyday gestures, and precisely for this reason capable of bringing us back to an ideal mirror, of showing us something of ourselves in the traits of each character. Which is the ultimate meaning of literature.
As usual, Soriga offers us his style, an excavated, essential word, rhythmic in an almost hypnotic period that evokes blues melodies and popular dirges and which is lyrical and immediate at the same time. Giving us fragments of stories like scenes that we happened to catch almost by chance in the street outside the house, while we were looking out the window. The same one to which we have long waited for the return of Soriga himself. Now we can say that it was worth it.
(Gianluca Gallinari, deputy editor-in-chief)
«Missitalia»
by Claudia Durastanti
The cover of Missitalia
(The ship of Theseus, 2024, pp. 400, 20 euros, e-book 11.99 euros)
«Works that are the result of invention, imagination, hope, illusions and ambitions are increasingly rare. Contemporary fiction is dedicated to the self, without the courage to try on the shoes of others.” This is what Elena Loewenthal wrote in La Stampa on 12 April.
«Missitalia», the new novel by Claudia Durastanti released a few weeks earlier, is an eloquent response to this fair observation. Because it arrives after the well-deserved success of the autobiographical «The Stranger» (finalist for the Premio Strega 2019) and clearly stands out from it, being in fact a courageous trilogy, a novel in three parts in which each part takes place in a different era and with a different protagonist: the adventurer Amalia Spada in the years of the Unification of Italy; the anthropologist Ada after the Second World War; and A, who lives in the future working for an unprecedented Mediterranean Space Agency.
Durastanti says that it is not necessary to find a connection between the parts of his novel, but there is no shortage of more or less evident references and suggestive echoes from one to the other, and as one proceeds with reading one even suspects that Amalia, Ada and A they are the same woman. Certainly the three protagonists have in common the fact of coming from somewhere else (and in this «Missitalia» is linked to «The Stranger») and they explore the place in which they find themselves through a path that leads them to personal fulfillment. There is certainly an environment – the Val d’Agri, in Basilicata, already central in «La Straniera» – which runs through the three stories and even ends up being replicated on the Moon; and also a symbolic object that unites them: oil.
But it really is better to approach this novel by giving up on understanding everything, and instead allowing yourself to be carried away by the fascinating flow of the story which goes from the western genre to noir, up to science fiction. Capture the themes that emerge page after page – the south and its representation, nature, matriarchy, love, the end… And, as far as possible, recognize the literary quotes of which the novel is very rich. In short: enjoying the prose of a writer who has a lot to say.
(Francesca Sandrini, deputy head of the Cronaca editorial staff and the province)
“Turn the page. Ten books to survive love”
by Ester Viola
The cover of Turning the Page
(Einaudi, 2023, pp. 130, euro 14)
There is a belief that runs in the background of all the stories of “Turn the Page”. It is not made explicit but permeates the one hundred and thirty pages held together with rhythm and irony, and repeats: we can do it. It is possible to heal from a disappointment in love, it is really possible to extricate oneself from toxic dynamics, a relationship gone wrong is not necessarily the end of the world but, on the contrary, sometimes it can allow us to make a leap in quality in view of the next one. relationship but above all a better life for ourselves.
However, Ester Viola is not a motivational coach, she is a divorce lawyer and a fine observer of human relationships, who strongly believes in the healing power of words. For this reason, her literary alter ego in the latest book published with Einaudi, in 2023, recommends a book for every occasion to friends and clients – fictitious characters, but who could be real, could be our friends or could be us – when sees them involved in some sentimental affair. Thus «Anna Karenina», Nick Hornby and «My Brilliant Friend» help to give some answers to the questions of those who are betrayed, are unrequited or are too jealous to see things as they really are. They are ideas and not easy recipes at hand, more than anything else proposals to try to shift the gaze to different angles, with the awareness that there are no books capable of saving someone’s life, but “some try better than others” .
(Laura Fasani, Web editorial team)
«The guardian of new beginnings»
by Mikki Brammer
The cover of The Keeper of New Beginnings
(Sperling & Kupfer, translation by Ada Arduini, 2024, pp. 368, euro 19.90)
Regrets, advice and confessions. Words pronounced on the point of death by those who are aware that the end of their earthly life is imminent always belong to one of these categories. Clover Brooks knows this well, as she works as an end-of-life doula, that is, she helps people to say goodbye to this world in peace, and she has dedicated a notebook to each of the three categories, in which she faithfully notes the confidences entrusted to her over years of I work for those who are no longer here.
Diaries full of stimuli, warnings and teachings, which she herself should take advantage of to make a change in an existence that is too solitary and melancholy for her young age, irremediably conditioned by the premature death of her parents and by too many feelings of guilt. For her to realize this, however, she needs the help of Claudia, a ninety-year-old who has faced life with determination and passion and who seems to have had (almost) everything from her life. To reconcile her with an old love, helping her close the circle of her existence, now that death is near, Clover will not hesitate to leave. A journey that for Claudia will represent a happy point of arrival, while for Clover the beginning of a new life.
(Clara Piantoni, Teletutto editorial team)
«The weapons of light»
by Ken Follett
The cover of The Weapons of Light
(Mondadori, translation by Annamaria Raffo, 2023, pp. 712, 27 euros, ebook 9.99 euros)
Abuse, love, passion, betrayals, battles and technical progress: there are all the elements that Ken Follett made us love in the other three novels of the Kingsbridge saga in “Weapons of Light”.
The events take place between 1792 and 1824, a time of changes and wars, of the birth of large factories that led weavers to work outside the home and on brand new machines (the giannette and then the steam engines) and the battlefields of the wars Napoleonic.
At the center there is always the beloved Kingsbridge which has changed so much since the 12th century of the first novel, “The Pillars of the Earth”. Follett takes the reader, through a very accurate historical reconstruction, into the very difficult daily life of the courageous and intelligent Sal and her son Kit, of the hateful Joseph Hornbeam and Will Riddick, of the honest Amos Barrowfield and of the stubborn Elsie Latimer up to the love between Spade Shoveller and Arabella Latimer; connected families all overwhelmed, each in their own way, by progress, by the rift between Anglicans and Methodists, by the very long war with France and by the Battle of Waterloo. In short, there is everything found in history books (the bread riots, the strikes, the forced enlistment, the laws against what will be the unions), but in a much more vibrant way and intertwined with the stories of people which could be those of our ancestors.
A novel to read, perhaps less strong than the previous three of the epic, but still enjoyable and compelling. To read.
(Elisa Rossi, Cronaca e provincial editorial team)
