Lto mother: here is a theme that literature never stops investigating. Exactly as each of us never ceases to question himself on his ownrelationship with the mother. Or about her role as a mother. So here are seven books about mothers.
Cassandra in Mogadishu
Of Igiaba Scego p. 368 euro 20 Bompiani
Igiaba’s mother and the civil war in Somalia in the 1990s the focus of Cassandra in Mogadishu, on the list of 12 candidates for the Strega.
Read why Igiaba Scego like a modern storyteller offers images and stories that give voice to the many mothers and daughters who are destined to escape from their land.
The summer my mother had green eyes
by Tatiana Țîbuleac p. 280, €17 Keller
Can a mother’s lack of love be forgiven? It is the inspiration of this book that won the European literature prize in 2017.
Poles emigrated to London Aleksey and his family live on the edge. To detonate the family and their future, the death of Aleksey Mika’s little sister. Which precipitated the mother in depression and made it for a long time unable to convey warmth and attention to his surviving son. Now, many years later, he, a highly regarded painter in a creative block, returns to his mother and their relationship, on the advice of his therapist. Riva with the thought to the moment when everything had an end and a new beginning. The last summer lived with the woman. in a small village in Atlantic France. A time for finally look into each other’s eyes, driven by the arrival of the inevitable and the need to make peace with each other and with themselves. The book won the European Casino de Santiago award in 2021
Read why it’s a book full of colors, laughter, love, and where everything becomes true, absolute, poetic.
There are worse moms than you
by Glenn Boozan, illustrations Priscilla Witte, page 66 euro 14 editions Fifth Fourth
An affectionate story to convince mothers that being perfect is useless, on the contrary…
The anxiety of maternal perfection (and unfortunately or fortunately now also paternal) is such that it serves someone capable of scientifically laughing it off. This book does it in the form of an illustrated book for adults tells the parental atrocities of many animals. Maybe just thoselike the panda, considered more tblack and cuddly. A Gallery of Tragic Events cobstructed to elicit a smile and remember one of the pillars of education: even a little imperfect mom is fine. Indeed it is better.
Must read because the smile helps to deal with difficult things.
Where you didn’t take me
by Maria Grazia Calandrone page 250 euro 19.50 Einaudi
The book by Maria Grazia Calandrone is among the 12 finalists at the Witch.
It’s 1965. An eight-month-old girl is left on a lawn in Villa Borghese in Rome. The mother Lucia Galante and her companion Giuseppe will be found shortly after drowned in the Tiber. Of that woman, his own biological mother, Calandrone reconstructs the figure. From the chronicle of that event, which ended up on the front page of the newspapers and which will mark his future in such a precise way, he starts. For “tear the smell of the mother from the earth“, For “revive a body, hot as the earth in summer and just as coherent”. Calandrone is looking for traces of that woman of whom he only has two photographs, in rural and ferocious Italy of the 40s and 50s. Where the daughters, even those of the peasants, are pawns to play in the family’s social climbing. Where the adulteress (but not the adulterous husband) is punished by law. Where men’s beatings don’t counteven if they are daily. In this investigative research he finds the documents that mark the eight months of life together. With “mathematics and feeling” look for an answer to the most essential question: did you love me?
Read because: behind the personal story, there is an extraordinary report on the lives of women between fascism and the boom years.
The year we burned ghosts
by Louise Erdrich page 368 euro 20 Feltrinelli
A personal and political process in the USA from the point of view of the natives.
In the spring of 2020, while the world is in lockdown and Minneapolis is experiencing days of anger and guerrilla warfare urban after the killing of George Floyd by a white policeman, Tookiea middle-aged woman with a difficult and turbulent past, he finds himself dealing with the ghost of Flora, who was a very present customer of the bookstore where she works. And with the ghosts of history that undermine the most solid ties within her family. In that labor, Tookie discovers something fundamental about himself and his childhood. A very rich novel, which talks about civil rights, the cult of tradition, the reality of the natives. And how many female figures can perform the function of mothers, and how it’s not always easy to say thank you.
Read why Erdrich guides us on a reading journey which is also an itinerary of personal rebirth.
Born under a bad moon
by Salvatore Niffoi page 176, euro 18, The Ship of Theseus
In Niffoi’s “favolaccia” the secret of a mother against the background of a dreamlike and cruel Sardinia.
Basilia Pistichinzu of Bodoloi marries Venanziu Serathula and gives birth to six twin girlsbut after their first birthday he dies. And the girlssoon deprive even the support of the father, they are raised by mama Lù and mama Doni that is, aunt Luisa Lentore and Signora Dionisa Carchina, one cookie maker and the other midwife, in the House at the top of which is the attic where the mother retired to write and play. The door to that attic is padlocked, and remains inaccessible. Until many years later someone, a female figure halfway between magic and reality, give them the key, committing them to open the lock when they turn 30. Only then Basilia’s terrible secret will be revealedhis impossible love and the oppression suffered, as well as the mystery of the birth of the six sisters. But the story, having reached a first turning point, it will continue on its way to the conclusion just as long dreamlike and fierce.
Read why he uses the dreamy tone of fairy tales and timeless stories to tell of very contemporary themes, and of abuses that have been ignored for too long.
Back to you
by Léonor del Récondo page 168 euro 18 Clichy comes out on May 23, 2023.
A novel about the unexpected roads that life travels.
For many too many years Magdalenaaccomplished stage actress, she carried the pain of an absence inside.That of the mother, when she was little more than a little girl. “She’s gone to rest” her grandparents and father kept repeating. Then in his life there was only acting. The only safe haven, against failures even in love. The only place to make your voice resonate. Until decades later her mother is traced. In the South of France. Magdalena leaves everything and goes to meet her, to settle accounts with Apollonia. to pour out all the pain that suffocates her. Returning to her, however, will ask for more. A journey to her mother, defenseless, without recriminations ..Only then will he find the right questionsthe only ones that can give an answer to his hunger for love
Read why Redondo’s writing gracefully tackles a powerful theme.
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