Freedom, friendship and courage. These are the key words of the first novel by Serena Bortone – the Rai journalist who hit the headlines for the Scurati case – guest last night at Da Margherita, in Villa Trieste in Catanzaro.
To you close so sweet by Serena Bortone (published by Rizzoli) is a coming-of-age novel set around the end of the 1980s whose protagonists are three teenagers from well-off Rome, whose friendship is put to the test… by love.
«To you so sweet is a story that I have always had in my heart but which I have only managed to write now» the author told the bookseller Nunzio Belcaro who interviewed her and to the numerous spectators in the Villa.
«It is a story that I actually experienced and that I wanted to entrust to a narrator who, for this very reason, bears my name; in these pages, although not autobiographical, there is a lot of the adult Serena because writing them came so spontaneously to me that I couldn’t do otherwise: I grew up writing it” continued the journalist. It’s still:
«In putting this story down on paper I wanted to re-analyse the inability I had at the time to be up to what was happening, because only by understanding mistakes, weaknesses and fragility can one become great and, above all, the comparison with a reality different from ours still makes us mature, whatever our age.”
In addition to Belcaro, Serena Bortone was welcomed on the Da Margherita stage by the first citizen of Catanzaro Nicola Fiorita and the Councilor for Culture Donatella Monteverdi.
Finally, to the inevitable question about the Scurati affair in Rai and the disciplinary measure concerning her, Bortone made use of the right not to answer, literally having it put on record that she was “honoured to work for the public service”.
