DI enter the glittering packaging of a thriller that gives the reader no breathing space, Donato Carrisi (five million copies sold, translated into over 30 countries and a successful director) addresses a powerful theme, not obvious for this literary genre, and tells a terrible story of abuse and gender violencewhich is discovered gradually, gradually peeling away the narrative layers.
The protagonist is once again Pietro Gerber, the child putter, expert hypnotist which we have already met in The house of voices, The house without memories And The house of lights. Now, in The house of silenceGerber follows the case of Matias, 9 years old, who every night he sees in his dream a sad woman, always dressed in dark who never speaks, but terrifies him.
Donato Carrisi and the ghosts
The silent lady shouldn’t exist and yet she seems real, like the stories she tells and which in a surprising ending are intertwined with the hypnotist’s life. Is there something beyond the physical world, beyond us? The rarefied atmospheres, the continuous reversal between dream and reality and the characters as evanescent as ectoplasm, drag the reader into a dreamlike dimension within which everyone can find their own answer.
Donato Carrisi was born in Martina Franca and lives between Rome and Milan. He studied Law and specialized in Criminology. Writer, director and screenwriter, he is the author of international bestsellers. Photo: © Gianmarco Chieregato
It is a story of ghosts, of phenomena bordering on the supernatural. Who really is the silent lady?
I was inspired by the tradition of the Gothic novel but in my book the ghosts do not haunt a place, but the mind of a child. They are the perception of a reality that is around us even if we don’t see it. And then ghosts can also be memories, especially the bad ones.
Matias’s parents have a subtle consistency, they seem like presences rather than people. Am I just a conduit to get the story started?
I wanted this family, tormented by the mysterious problem of their son who has the same dream every night, to remain one step behind the story.
The house of silences by Donato Carrisi, Longanesi416 pages, 23 euros
The silent lady is a victim of abuse. Even in Io sono l’abisso he spoke about violence against women.
I think thriller is the best tool to tell these stories. An essay on gender violence would not be as effective. The story of the novel gets inside you. Right during a presentation of I Am the Abyss, a boy approached me, with great embarrassment, and told me that when his girlfriend left him, he was obsessed with her. But after reading the book he realized how wrong he was.
It is Matias who gives voice to the violence against the lady, who recounts it firsthand under hypnosis. Why this narrative device?
Everything described by children is more authentic, more disruptive, because it is filtered through innocence.
The novel revolves around a central question: does something exist beyond us?
We have become incredibly materialistic, we have placed total trust in technology and science, as is right, but some questions regarding human nature remain open, namely whether there is a further reality, something that transcends us. This question is fundamental in every era and it is dangerous to hide it. I always move into territories on the edge of the supernatural, I do it with the instrument of rationality but sometimes you also have to let go, abandon yourself to the dream.
So how do you respond?
I think there is something that goes beyond the tangible. It’s not just me who says it, but science too. Physicists are considered almost sorcerers after discovering that the quantum world responds to laws that are the opposite of those that govern the macroscopic world.
You talk about a hypnosis practice that can erase memories. Is this real too?
In reality that is a mechanism that is implemented by the patient, not by the therapist. However, the use of radio frequencies to help the psyche free itself from certain events, perhaps traumatic, is real.
There is a lot of scientific research behind his stories.
It’s the funniest part, I’m always driven by great curiosity. Then another type of feeling intervenes, which is that of telling someone as soon as possible what I discovered.
Did you want to leave any doubts about the ending?
There is a component of mystery, as in life… But it is a closed ending, even if seeing it open, as often happens to my readers, is more comforting. I believe that those who read already know all the answers. But he often doesn’t want to admit it.
Will Gerber, his baby sleeper, return?
Maybe. I behave like a reader, I write the stories I would like to read. In my head there are seven “houses” and I already have the subject of future novels in mind. But it’s not enough, you need the right spirit to tell. And sometimes that spirit runs out.
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