Una navy naive and ignorant, but beautiful and long black braids, is put pregnant by the nobleman for whose family works, under the eyes aware of the aristocratic wife of the aristocrat. He knows nothing about children, she who is convinced that she came to the world just as they had told her: under a cabbage leaf, in the wetland. The lifter of the country will take care of her and her baby, giving way to one family saga that begins in the late nineteenth century and reaches the nineties of the twentieth century.
A particular saga, however, where the women of the family are Crossing from a line of magic, they feel the voices, they understand the bad luck, sometimes making it unscrupulous use. In a humble everyday life, twice shocked by the war, between illegitimate children, miraculous plants, a ghost who has a lot to say but probably has the wrong house, the stories of the characters flow like a placid river, enriched by a sumptuous language that makes reading a real pleasure.
Author Nadia Noio is an archaeologist of Neapolitan origin who lives and works in Padua And he tells us that he brought his passion for “excavation” in the novel.
Nadia Noio grew up in Naples. Graduated in Archeology, he works in different Italian regions but lives in Padua. Spring will return is his first novel.
Explain to us how?
All historical disciplines help to find a key to reading the past, archeology also has a “material” start. In the excavations, fragments of a story, of a person who has left a piece of himself in the earth are highlighted in light: identity is unknown, but after, the mind imagines. Archeology gave me a method, my characters have almost reconstructed them, as historians or genealogists do.
The story unfolds between the mid -1800s and the late 1900s. Currently, many novels by young authors focus on the period of the two wars, in particular the second. Why this fascination?
For the profession I do it is easier for me to imagine characters who come from the past. It is easier to review what happened ex post and make the characters move in this frame. But I also believe that the element of the war, unfortunately, is the most breaking in a person’s life.
The women of the family “feel” the voices that anticipate the events. They call them Janus …
Both for the way they lead their existence, and for the slightly nebulary origins cannot be welcome from the rest of the community. Ianara would be the witch, even in the sense of a woman not completely integrated. Of them you are afraid, you imagine that who knows what art they can put into practice to damage. But they are also respected.
Nadia Noio’s spring will return, Fazi publisher600 pages, 18 €
Why did he want to give a magical tone to the story?
I believe that the magical element is well reconciled with the form of the family story, typical of the oral tradition in which the contours of the facts each time widens, dilate by transforming the episodes into something incredible that at each passage it is enriched with imaginative, like a wireless phone. It also represents that immaterial inheritance that each family moves from one generation to another: the peculiarities of one teaching, the character of another … and then, perhaps because the prodigious element is typical of my culture of origin: in Naples superstition and magic are part of the genius loci.
A poor servant exploited by the noble family, someone who goes to the front without understanding the reason, a marriage celebrated by chance with the brother of the real promised bridegroom then very happy … stories of simple people. Why?
I believe that telling small stories, without a directionality that culminates in success, is more interesting, even if not striking.
How much does fate affect simple people?
As I said, we are partly linked to a kind of hereditary element, therefore in some way our destiny is to be born in a certain place and within the same family. Then there is always the idea of predestination: I am not very fatalistic, but I believe that a part of our history is a little conveyed: oriented, rather than predestined.
Piccerella, Speringula, Lacerta … almost all the characters have a nickname.
An ironic key to represent also the external eye: those who are not part of the family can detect features at first sight invisible.
There is a very iellate character, Nicola, that not even the magical arts of his brother’s South American wife Paolo manage to save from Malasorte.
I am passionate about South American literature, I like magical realism. I also like the irony of those books, I find that there are very strong contact points with my culture of origin.
Lucia stands out, smarter, more acute than her brothers. It is done, a little bitterness, a little tries to improve. What does it represent?
He is a character who has his ambiguity, like the ianare of previous generations, is a little feared, but is also respected, he has a somewhat turbid past, but he manages to redeem himself, becomes a point of reference for the cultural life of the city.
It would seem to embody the city of Naples …
He is a very iridescent character, who manages to adapt to situations and tries to build his figure also through the negative judgments of others, turning to his advantage positive and negative advertising. In fact, a capacity for resistance to the typical impact of Naples.
And Aunt Rosalba, the ghost of the noblewoman evoked almost by mistake, called aunt but not a relative at all?
Here too there is a bit of Naples. Where else are we talked about with the dead even not belonging to their family?
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