Seight the red and black cover of The orchid lie there is another with an ancient shape and a faded color. It is a second novel, entitled Labia sericea written by Victoria Anthon. The reader finds himself taken aback even before starting to read Donato Carrisi’s latest bookItalian master of the thriller with twenty million copies sold worldwide and successful director.
Because what the author constructs is a metanarrative that disorientates and confuses, mixes reality and fiction, lies and truth and sows doubts until the last page. The manuscript by Victoria Anthon, an elusive author whose face no one knows, tells of a family massacre that occurred in 2005: in a red farmhouse in the countryside, a man, Lorenzo C., exterminates his family, wife and three children, cutting their throats and then gets himself arrested.
He is the monster. Or so everyone thinksbecause the most convenient truth is the one at hand. Victoria begins to investigate the matter with the help of journalist Alfredo F., discovering other truths, other secrets. And finding herself in the presence of something imponderable, “overhuman”, as she herself defines it. In the red farmhouse it didn’t go as it seems, but the ending is shocking and impossible to predict until the last page.
Donato Carrisi is a writer, screenwriter, playwright and director, winner of the David di Donatello with The Girl in the Fog. His thrillers have sold twenty million copies worldwide. (Photo Moreno Pirovano for Zampediverse)
Carrisi builds a sophisticated scaffolding, a thriller that violates all the rules of the genre and plays with the reader, leaving him at the mercy of a narrator as seductive as the scent of the Labia sericea orchid, the rarest flower in the world.
What was the suggestion, the spark, that gave you the idea for the novel?
I always try to make my books adhere to current events. And the topic that tickled me the most was the relationship between truth and lies, the ease with which we believe we can access the truth. I call it the Wikipedia or ChatGpt illusion. Then I thought of a provocation, writing a false book. And the thing that disconcerts me the most is that so many readers are searching online for Victoria Anthon and the facts of the red farmhouse. People no longer know how to distinguish between reality and fiction.
It is a very current debate, between fake news, deepfakes (hyper-realistic videos created with artificial intelligence), alternative truths. Is this also a political book?
Yes. And I think genre writers are very political and bring sensitive topics to a wide audience. Let’s take Stephen King, the most censored in the United States. For years, through his stories, he has fought against racism in a powerful way: among his readers there are certainly racists, who perhaps reading him reflect on their ideas.
But do we still care about the truth?
No, we’re interested in what’s new. In the case of Garlasco, for example, people don’t care if there is an innocent person in prison but know if there is some juicy detail that had not yet been revealed.
The Lie of the Orchid by Donato Carrisi, Longanesi400 pages, €23
Does the Labia sericea orchid (which doesn’t exist, but could) symbolize the seductive lies we construct for convenience?
It’s up to each of us to believe or not believe. We live in a strange age, we take things like truth and freedom for granted, but obscurantism is coming, I see it galloping. And it doesn’t just belong to regimes, but it’s also cultural, it’s a mental dullness that concerns us all. At this moment there is no political movement capable of defending the freedom of other people’s ideas, they are all entrenched in their positions. And this is scary.
Why did you choose to use a female alter ego, Victoria Anthon?
To implement the maximum fiction. And then I believe that my inner voice is feminine, because I learned how to tell stories from my mother. She was the one who read me stories, recommended books and films to me.
Was it liberating to have someone else “write” the novel?
Very much. There was greater detachment, I usually feel very involved in the stories I tell, I suffer, I feel them. In this case, however, it seemed to me that someone else was responsible.
Is the disturbing atmosphere that builds throughout the novel a real character?
Yes. I didn’t just want to tell a story but also an emotion, a sensation. And I wanted to create an experience.
This is a thriller that doesn’t play by the rules. Without revealing anything, can you tell me how readers reacted?
Someone got angry. And it’s normal to feel disorientated at the end, but many wrote to me a few days after finishing it to tell me that they understood. The book continued to act within them. And I think this is what a novel should do. Challenge your readers. The thriller itself as a genre is changing. 60 percent of those who read my books are under 30 years old, they are people who often find their food ready in TV series and when they read they want to be stimulated. Gillian Flynn (author of the bestseller Love Liars, ed.) and Stephen King do it very well.
Will we see his most famous character again, Pietro Gerber, the child putter?
If he tells me the right story, yes. For me, the story takes precedence over the characters. But I think Gerber still has a lot to say.