Saturday 22 June, at the Coop bookshop in the Tiburtino shopping center in Guidonia, from 4.00 pm to 7.00 pm, the writer Valentina Meola will meet readers for a copy signing. It will be an opportunity to exchange views, opinions or satisfy some curiosity about his novel “A particular Sunday – The Immortals”.
This is a debut in the narrative of Meola, editorial director of the Aletti publishing house, who delivers a choral novel, with picturesque characters that animate the daily life of the small and imaginary village of Rocca Mischina, nestled between the mountains and the sea. Along the alleys and streets of the town, described in detail during the course of the Sunday of August 24, 1952, the individual destinies of the villagers, connected to each other, are tied together from the early morning, with an increasing rhythm, and then untie. in the evening. Between confessions, misfortunes, amusing anecdotes and inevitable twists and turns, against the backdrop of the post-war period where the signs of conflict still remain in body and spirit, the village is preparing to experience a special day. In short, to live your whole life in one day.
With the style of a fairy tale and language marked by the lightness of Calvin’s memory, amusing but also moving tones, an “ancient story” unfolds, in which wealth and poverty, pain and passion, truth and lies, and the unbridled mania for gambling of the Lotto, they envelop, like a veil, figures that remain in the collective memory, which are handed down through the stories of the elderly to subsequent generations.
The author, who lives in Guidonia and has lived in large cities such as Naples, Genoa and Alessandria, has at the same time always frequented the small places scattered throughout the country, from which she drew inspiration for this portrait which accentuates their common lines. Every self-respecting small village in Italy has her folklore characters. Existences so singular that they are covered, like a second skin, with an almost mythical halo, where it is difficult to separate reality from legend.
