THETo Isabel of Rossella Milone is arrogant, but also generous. Independent and mean, selfish and affectionate. Isabel is a collage of looks, those of the parents, the former boyfriend, friends, of the cleaning lady. Who tell it with their personal point of view. Grows in a wealthy family, He flees from the country, Cremano, near Naples, makes a career as a curator of museums, he travels around the worldhe has a partner and a daughter, but he left an imprint in every person he met.
The first love, choirs, perhaps has never forgotten it, The neighbor Sandra, forced to immobility, meditates a sort of revengefriend Matilde is still jealous … And each of them holds a small secret which has branches in the lives of others.
In The first desire by Rossella Milone Eight interconnected stories build a perfect narrative mechanism that returns the figure of the protagonist Isabelbut also those of the satellite characters who turn around them without ever really touching her. The author puts her gaze on lives that already flow, tears from each a precise shred and enlarged it out of all proportion. Physical writing, overbearing, enters the reader through all the senses.
Rossella Milone is the author of many stories and novels awarded and included in the quality rankings. He founded and coordinates an observatory that monitors and supports the form of the literary story. (Photo: Rino Bianchi © Rino Bianchi / Rosebud2)
The first desire by Rossella Milone
What does the first desire for the title represent?
As I wrote, it became more and clearer to me that the characters asked for a form of salvation. I worked on the novel in the years following Covid and when the war broke out in Ukraine and probably felt that urgency of salvation around and around me, which I then declined and disguised in many ways. Depending on the characters, it becomes sexual desire, revenge, roots, escape.
The structure of the novel is a complex architecture, but fluid, each story reveals something of the previous one, the points of view change. How did you build it?
I am above all writer of stories and when these characters introduced myself I felt that the traditional novel would not be the right guise, he would have limited me. So I built this short story cycle (cycle of short stories), each story is autonomous but dialogues with others and leaves something pending. This suspension gave me the opportunity to create the passage of time.
Isabel is sectioned, described by every character. Still, it remains elusive. Did he want it like that?
I noticed it at the end of the writing. And I thought of Henry James lady’s portrait in which Isabel Archer, coincidentally the same name as my protagonist, is at the center but a little in the shade. I wanted to create a very multifaceted woman, not sunny in a definition because identity is constantly changing, even compared to those who meet.
“The first desire” by Rossella Milone, Black puddle304 pages, 20 €
Isabel has a conflicting relationship with almost everyone. Why?
To save herself he must reap some victims. You cannot build your own happiness without causing a little unhappiness in others. The conflict is salvific.
Sandra, Isabel’s neighbor, is infirm and seems to exist by prosecutor, only when you feel “seen” and considered by another person. Do you really live only when you are under someone else’s gaze?
The eye of the others defines us but it is only a variable, not the only one as possible. In the case of Sandra I liked to tell his resistance. Although I live on a reflection and inside a prison, he built a sense of himself of which he is satisfied, that he was enough to old age. Then something happens, but the interpretation is left to the reader.
Almost every character hides a secret, a shame. Are these small faults that make us human?
Yes, perfection would condemn us. But the error must be contextualized, has reverberations that with the passage of time change. A fault of youth perhaps as adults seems to us to be nonsense.
It seems that the protagonists, in a different way, try to retain time, youth.
It is so. Isabel deludes himself to succeed by collecting a myriad of objects, his father Mario saving the avifauna from extinction, Isabel’s daughter safeguarding architectural beauty. There is a form of stubbornness in wanting to forget that we are then destined to leave everything.
Savana, Antarctica, Mountain, volcano. Each natural landscape it describes enters the eyes, nose and ears of the reader in the nose. Are they memories of his travels?
I frequent the autobiography little. I was in the savannah but I did a lot of research to describe Isabel’s journey with the parents in Kenya. These landscapes arise from suggestions, perhaps lived, which then turn for narration needs. The most intimate thing is the link with the volcano, which touches my deep individuality since I was born in Pompeii.
Without revealing too much, in the end Isabel is saved?
I don’t feel like nailing it to a definitive response, I let those who read decide. The form of the story manages to do just that, entertain a direct relationship with the reader and call it into question, always.
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