Paxions, jealousies, painful breakups and loves that resist time: for the month of November we have chosen novels that tell “the complexity of the heart in relationships between two people”.
In The love letter by Cathleen Schine, an “apparently banal” event upsets the peace of a bookseller and the entire New England town. Margaret Atwood, with Life before maninstead takes us inside “the folds of human nature”, describing a crisis in which “everyone seeks identity through the other”.
Then there is the unwavering love of Love in the time of cholera“a dance of style and senses” signed García Márquez, and the fatal passion of Anna Karenina“the peak of Tolstoy’s creative perfection.” In Love is a river by Carla Madeira, the writing “drags with impetus and sensuality” a story of desire and violence.
And to close, The closing credits of a life together Of Diego De Silva, “a great novel about the end of love”, where two voices cross regrets with strength and irony.
In a coastal town in New England, Helen, a happy-to-be bookseller, divorced without nostalgia, carefully keeps her space, all colored pink. The consolidated order is broken by a mysterious love letter that arrives at the bookshop: in fact, it is not clear who sent it, nor to whom it is intended. Starting with Helen, the whole town is thrown into turmoil by this seemingly banal event, with a final twist. A light story, told with humor and insight, which also makes you think about the emptiness of love and its universal caring.
The love letter by Cathleen Schine, Adelphi
Life Before Man by Margaret Atwood
A book on the complexity of the heart and human relationships, with a careful look at the female condition. It tells the story of Elizabeth, who finds herself facing a profound personal crisis after her lover commits suicide and her husband Nate begins a relationship with a young paleontologist. The situation is explored from the different points of view of the characters, each searching for identity through the other. A confirmation of Atwood’s ability to enter into the folds of human nature, which leads us to reflect on the reasons for every emotional bond.
Life before man by Margaret Atwood, Ponte alle Grazie
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
An unshakable love, which resists time, old age, all the adversities that, for fifty-three years, seven months and eleven days – including nights – kept Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza apart, even after she got married to another man, after the blaze of their youthful love. In a Caribbean setting, made magical by Gabo’s style, the story is a hymn to persistence, to faith in valid feelings and to a justice of the heart that reunites those who are destined to be together.
A dance of style and senses.
Love in the time of cholera by Gabriel García Márquez, Mondadori
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, Einaudi
«All happy families are alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way». With this masterful incipit Tolstoy begins a timeless masterpiece. It is the story of Anna, wife of the cold minister Karenin, who meets the charming Count Vronsky in Moscow and of the irresistible passion that blazes between the two. To the point that the woman abandons her husband and children to follow him, creating a scandal in Russian society at the end of the 19th century. The story with Vronski, however, becomes problematic – today we would say toxic – determining in the woman the choice of a tragic death. In the new translation by Claudia Zonghetti, it is a book to read and reread. «The peak of Tolstoy’s creative perfection» according to Vladimir Nabokov.
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, Einaudi
Love is a River by Carla Madeira
Literary case of 2024 in Brazil, it is a story of overabundance of love, uncontainable by social rules. The plot revolves around three main characters: they are there Venâncio and Dalva, husband and wife, linked by total love, and there is Lucy, a proud prostitute desired by everyoneexcept from Venâncio, initially. His burst onto the scene upsets the balance, and in the end he will get the better of Venâncio. An uncompromising exploration of passion, jealousy, the violence of possessionof the condition of women in a patriarchal context. Mind the writing puts itself at the service of the facts, dragging them with impetus and sensuality, like a river.
Love is a river by Carla Madeira, Fazi
The closing credits of a life together by Diego De Silva
A great novel about the end of love, winner of the Viareggio 2025 Award. The story is told in two voices: those of Fosco and Alice who loved each other very much and who are now about to say goodbye. The practices to do so reduce the vertigo of feelings to cold bureaucratic language, while she would like drama and he would above all want peace. They then decide to retreat to one great house of memories, to go through regrets to the end.
With strength, with steady eyes, without giving up the irony that distinguishes him, De Silva empathetically and surgically etches a counter-fable.
The closing credits of a life together
by Diego De Silva, Einaudi