“The book of impossible love” by Giuseppe Culicchia: book review

Plosing yourself in the power of love is like banging your head against the clouds. You bring the west with you when it cools the sunny summer afternoons. You become light-hearted, better prepared to smile until you put yourself back in the hands of frivolity so much so that time seems like a babà. When you know love you learn many things, good and bad.

You understand it from your eyes and from your facts. The most natural and complicated feeling can be one-way, reciprocated and even impossible. Being twinned in love means shaking like butterflies when they emerge from the cocoon. Sometimes, you can’t see well. You are happy, you even feel proud of the love you give and receive. But it also happens that, unconsciously, you also receive something else that remains hidden. Then, when you discover the secrets, you feel the foolishness of the trust you placed in the wrong person. Thus you begin to see clearly and ask yourself many questions. You are left with a lump of excessive crying, however, for that thwarted, impossible love. Won by the deaf and powerful will of those who refuse the happiness of others.

In The book of impossible love Of Giuseppe Culicchia you breathe a lost love, forever. During a Neapolitan walk, the writer Francesco Durante introduces Giuseppe Culicchia to Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano, in via Toledo. In front of the painting of a young woman “with her head covered by a veil, her hands clasped and very sad eyes”, she tells the story of Giulia Spinelli. It is the portrait of a girl from a good family who fell in love with her music teacher, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. Theirs is an impossible love. Giulia, to save the life of her lover, chose seclusion. On the day of the nunship, Pergolesi played the organ while she took her vows.

The novel has an ancient flavor. It is a wonderful homage to Naples that conquers with its beauty and its contradictions. The narrative induces the reader to continuously reflect on themes that the writer, with talent, poses naturally. The concepts of faith, destiny, love are clear, as if they came out of the fog to be understood.

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“The book of impossible love” by Giuseppe Culicchia, Harper Collins editions. Dream Book.