TOApril is the ideal month to be surprised by stories that delve into identity, bonds and memory. From the imperfect and corrosive fathers of Our Fathers to the literary obsessions of The Stockholm Messiah, passing through all-female investigations, family sagas and coming-of-age novels, these books intertwine irony, mystery and sentiment. A journey between genres and styles that invites us to read the present through different lives, passions and destinies.
Let’s go to John Niven’s black humorto Cynthia Ozick’s theme of loss and identity. From Gabriella Genisi’s police force fighting against the taint of chauvinism to the collapse of the Florian empire.
From the story of Teo who has to face the ancient wound to that of the historic brand La Perla.
Here are 6 spring reads for all tastes.
They get to know each other while smoking a cigarette, the one inhaled outside the maternity ward where an exhausted woman has just given birth to a newborn. They are Dan and Jada, the first screenwriter frustrated and exasperated by years of procreation attempts finally succeeding; the second, a petty criminal, uncertain about “how many brats in the city have his big face”. After Envy your neighborthe author stages the same clash between yin and yang, two opposing subjects who smell each other and then bond in an unlikely friendship, marked by a tragedy. A sort of descent into hell and the black humor (at times for strong stomachs) of which the author is a master give spice and impetus to the apparently univocal theme of fatherhood.
Our fathers by John Niven, Einaudi, 384 pages, €20
“The Messiah of Stockholm” by Cynthia Ozick
An obsession! A craze! But how can one improvise as the children of Bruno Schulz, the Polish Jewish writer killed in 1942? Lars Andemening, meticulous reviewer of Stockholm’s Morgontörn, is invaded by this madness. He only reads disappeared and little translated authors from the East. We follow him at night to Heidi’s bookshop, “a bookish woman”, waiting for the mysterious Doctor Eklund. Until a certain Adela also introduces herself as Schulz’s daughter. In the middle, a phantom manuscript, the “Messiah”, which gives the novel its title. Cynthia Ozick explores the theme of loss and identity, mixing refugees and impostors and, at 90 years old, gives us yet another formidable story.
The Messiah of Stockholm by Cynthia Ozick, The Ship of Theseus, 192 pages, €20
“The Devil’s Mirror” by Gabriella Genisi
We know at least two of determined women, who impose themselves with ready intelligence and Mediterranean sensuality, between the Bari area and Salento, and she created them Gabriella Genisi: Lolita Lobosco and Chicca Lopez. One a very feminine police commissioner and the other a gender fluid marshal, they both do a “men’s” job and happily alternate in the novels of the Apulian writer. In the new book it is the edgy policewoman who investigates a seemingly routine case. The adventure involves, in order, a jogging lawyer, a disarming Indian boy, a philanthropic and talkative marquise, a very unlucky young talented goldsmith… And naturally she, the hard and fragile Chicca, who travels on her motorbike between the sea and the countryside, between mysteries and magic, launches a battle against the tare of machismo.
The Devil’s Mirror by Gabriella Genisi, Rizzoli Libri, 240 pages, €17.50
“The golden years of the Florio dynasty” by Serena Lo Pilato and Silvia Maira
The epic story of the Florio family, in the glittering Palermo of the Belle Époque, never ceases to fascinate. Silvia Maira and her daughter Serena (born 2007), intertwine the memories of “grandfather Mimì” (Domenico Andreoni, office manager of Cantina Florio) to the historiographical reconnaissance. The focus is on the businesses started, generation after generation: the tuna fisheries, the winery. And then the ceramic, textile and chemical industries, the foundry, the sulfur extraction activity, the fleet of 99 ships. The decline of an immense heritage was unstoppable, until the collapse of the Florio empire. A fairy tale without a happy ending. The story unfolds, with a light touch, up to the Florio descendants, the last “Lions of Sicily”.
Everything between us is infinite by Nicola Campiotti
There is one thing about books that reaches the reader even before the words: it is the urgency behind the words. Then it is the very necessity of narration that becomes, in itself, style. This has happened, right from the start, daring and prophetic, of Nicola Campiotti’s first novelknown as a film and TV director. The story, which has traits inspired by the author’s autobiography, to then become a reflection on human universals such as love, pain, the inevitability of growth, tells of Teo, born in a separation between a father from the north and a mother from the south, brought to Rome by their shared love of cinema. With flashbacks and forwards, Teo will have to look the ancient wound in the face, after the sudden end of his first, very pure, love as a teenager. Written with a rhythm that never lets up, the pages pursue the meaning, even for us who read, of a life.
Everything between us is infinite by Nicola Campiotti, Sperling & Kupfer, 256 pages, €12.90
“Our Pearl” by Alberto Masotti
The illustrated history of the lingerie brand considered a symbol of refinement and quality in the world. We start from the Second World War, when the founders Ada, Alberto, Olga write the first page of a fairy tale which, from a small laboratory, will lead to a grandiose company. Masotti, president from 1981 to 2007, retraces the stages of this success, speaking in first person, without neglecting anecdotes and curiosities, which are intertwined with ateliers and sales points that are gradually opened on all continents, through the work of a united and passionate community. A tribute on the occasion of La Perla’s 70th anniversary.
