THEEvil sometimes hides in the details. You don’t need big gestures, precise speeches, experiences that mark, to detach day after day, one piece at a time, from a reality in which there is nothing clearly wrong, but also nothing that resembles us. It is what happens to Margaret, the protagonist of Almost nothing wrongthe novel special mention at the last Italo Calvino Award, of which it is author the young Greta Pavan.
Greta Pavan was born in Desio and lives in Milan where she works as an editor. Almost nothing wrong received the special mention of the Calvino Prize 2022. (Photo: © YAY studio)
Greta Pavan’s Brianza
Margherita and Greta have in common that they have grown up in the 90s in a Brianza with the religion of work as a means of affirmationto have a family of Venetian emigrants behind him, to have seen in Milan the exit from a closed circuit of existences marked by environmental conditioning. But Margherita also represents an entire generation and its search for an identity, in the midst of values that leave you in the cold. All guided by a skilful language, full of sensations that make the story penetrate first from the skin, then from the eyes.
How do you feel close to your protagonist?
First of all, the context brings us closer. A literary adage says to start from what you know best, and I know Brianza better than any other place. Then time: she was born in 1990, I was born in 1989, so we share the passage of a millennium, with its conflictuality of some drives that look back and some drives that look forward. And finally, we share an almost eschatological attraction towards Milan, as salvation. That said, it is not an autobiographical novel.
Will you introduce us, then, to Margherita?
Margherita is a child, then a girl, then a young adult, whom we meet when she is 6 years old, in 1996; and the last one in 2012, when she was 22. she Since she was a child she has had a particular look at things. She asks a lot of questions, she looks at the details. She’s also a little girl who absorbs so much of what she has around her, and that’s the side of her that’s a little more complicated than her. Above all, she absorbs small acts of violence and power, which are “almost nothing”, but in the course of her life they will become something important. Her existence is defined by work, as for everyone in that area; but she does not find identity in the profession. The others seem to be in their place, she never.
Who are the characters that revolve around her?
The other characters may not be happier than her, but they certainly ask less questions. She has one foot inside her and one foot outside her world: in the sense that she seeks belonging but also rejects it. The other characters have both feet inside her. Therefore they have very specific convictions, both political and existential. Margherita defines these positions as almost inherited, therefore not the result of research. And they are very ambiguous characters, because they are all looking for some form of power, although I am not talking about large entrepreneurial realities. Everyone is looking for some revenge.
Almost nothing wrong with Greta Pavan, Stamped Boringhieri192 pages, €16
So we come to the title. Can you explain it to us?
It is the quote from a verse by Fabrizio De André that I reproduce in the book. It is taken from the song Il bombarolo, which speaks of an absolutely ordinary employee who, being “almost nothing wrong”, ends up becoming a bomber. Margherita also never receives real violence, they are details of her, you can always belittle her, but in the end she acts.
There is a high level of theatricalization in his look. What does this detachment entail?
In exergue I also quote Erving Goffman, author of Everyday Life as Performance, who interprets all everyday interactions as dramaturgical interactions. I use this perspective, which is also Margherita’s gaze, precisely because she observes and observes herself, not being completely inside the scene. A defense mechanism.
Is Milan a lifeline in all of this?
In a naive and idealistic way, for her it is really the only way out. He discovers her through her father’s new partner who has the charm of being “from Milan”. She has never seen the city yet, it is small, but she sees a goal in that destination. From Margherita’s point of view there is a binary contrast with Brianza: right/wrong, good/bad. And her search for her good is also her aspiration to be a journalist, and she can only do so in Milan.
A peculiar trait is the plot of the story.
The story consists of a series of fragmentary episodes, not in chronological order. I wanted to delegate the ordering of reality to the reader and avoid imposing a thesis. It is up to the reader to eventually find the root of Margherita’s evil. It is, in fact, a story about the randomness of violence.
The ending surprises, but not too much.
The scattered clues lead there: between everything and nothing, Margherita chooses nothing. No compromises.
iO Woman © REPRODUCTION RESERVED