Lsundial by Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson, The Sundial, Einaudi 2021, pp. 251, € 19.00
A year before Hill House’s Nightmare, Shirley Jackson released The Sundial. Stephen King will declare that he wrote The Shining “keeping in mind” this very novel. The way his characters are locked up in a house. The inhabitants of King’s Overlook do not know they are waiting for the end of (their) world, those of Villa Halloran do. A premonition warned them: the world will end, and the only ones who will be saved are the house and its inhabitants. I’m not afraid to call La Meridiana a brilliant novel. Caustic, disturbing, funny. Like the inhabitants of the villa. Will a universal storm really come to wipe out everything but this bunch of bored aristocrats? It is the fatal night; the wind shakes the foundations of the house. If Evil is inside or outside, only dawn can reveal it to us.
Struggles and Metamorphosis of a Woman by Édouard Louis
Struggles and Metamorphosis of a Woman by Édouard Louis, The Ship of Theseus
«My mother’s story begins with a dream: to become a cook». But at 16, the time for projects has already passed: she finds herself pregnant and the wife of a man who drinks and beats her. Édourd Louis returns to his childhood and makes that pain the propellant for a new story of denunciation of violence: the one that misery exerts on people’s lives, that of men on women. Above all it speaks of redemption. Even that of the author and the mother from mutual shame. “” You saw I’m not the same anymore! I’m really Parisian now ”. I smiled. “Yes. You are really the queen of Paris!”. He hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. ‘
The other house of Simona Vinci
The other house of Simona Vinci, Einaudi, pp. 384.20 €
A historical photo, sepia toned, in the center Giuseppe Verdi with the singers Giuseppina Pasqua and Teresa Stolz, in Montecatini. The ancient Villa Giacomelli where Giuseppina lived, the favorite of the Busseto swan, threads that intertwine past and present, truth and fantasy, music and secrets. The house was closed from the inside, say Marco and Fred: how did Maura, a soprano who may no longer be able to sing, and Ursula, an assistant who hides the biggest of secrets, got out? Mysteries, stories layered in a temporal vertigo and a spiral of suspicion. Is talent a gift or a sacrifice?
The voice of Robert Wright by Sacha Naspini
The voice of Robert Wright by Sacha Naspini, Editions E / O, pp. 320, 18 €
CS’s career coincided with the voice actor role of a great international actor, Robert Wright. Money, fame, family, everything came from that lucky encounter. But his alter ego suddenly disappears. What will become of his voice? Naspini constructs a text of great psychological impact that challenges us to distinguish in others and in ourselves the boundary that separates the ego and the masks that cover it.
Chronicles from the lands of Scarciafratta Remo Rapino
Chronicles from the lands of Scarciafratta Remo Rapino, Minimum Fax, pp. 191, 18 €
A new choral novel, in which Remo Rapino honors the lives and miracles of the last. A moving and entertaining epic, set in a Macondo d’Abruzzo, theater of ghosts and visions. Following a terrible earthquake, the small town emptied itself, but its stories are all still there. Mengo, the last inhabitant together with the dog Sciambricò, collects them. Mengo found among the rubble the children’s notebooks and a registry office, a source of stories at the end of his life in a retirement home. A book that keeps you warm, that makes you human. (Giulia Calligaro)
Full point by Simonetta Agnello Hornby
Full point by Simonetta Agnello Hornby, Feltrinelli, 336 pp, 19 €
«Embroider your life and God will forgive you». This is the motto on which the action of the Circolo del Punto Full is based, created by the Three Sagge, the eldest of the Sorci family, the Palermitan family protagonist of the saga that the author, in the third book, brings to completion here. A story that feeds on lights and shadows, full and empty, and which deals with violence, so much violence, starting with that of men against women. But that moves from there, and gives strength to those hungry for hope. (LB)
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