C.is a cut-off age at which do you no longer feel butterflies in your stomach? No, and absolutely not. Especially now, an era that is striving to tear down all the barriers of inclusion and age-related conventions. You can love each other even at the age of seventy and eighty. There is no expiration date for feelings. Above all, everyone always has a second or third chance. Love really has no age.
After the experience in another publishing house, the writer Lidia Ravera returns to propose “Terzo Tempo” the series he conceived and created for “over” feelings with Harper Collins and his Harmony brand. It wants to be “the manifesto of a new way of living love even when you are no longer young”, explains the publishing house.
«In Italy the over 60s are almost 30% of the population, about 17 million people. They are in good health, they still feel young, they have another three decades of life ahead of them. And to live means to love, to be loved, to meet new people, to seduce, to dream and to plan, but there is no narrative that sees them as protagonists of love, seduction, passion », explains Lidia Ravera.
The first two novels in the series will be released on February 10th. It is about Suspended between sky and sea, by Emanuela Giordano and by Still beautiful, by Linda Brunetta. Which we propose among the books to read of the week.
1 / Books to read. Still beautiful
Why read it
Amelia, sixty-two, divorced, has always been the most beautiful. She went through her entire life armed only with rimmel and lipstick. Her role as mother and grandmother doesn’t suit her, even though she has a lovely daughter and a gorgeous granddaughter. One day, his toy boy murmurs a seemingly innocuous sentence, which, however, she can no longer forget. You are still beautiful. Faced with that anchor, Amelia decides that the time has come for her to learn to do without the gaze of others, because sooner or later that will fail regardless of his will.
In search of comfort, she takes refuge in her former mother-in-law’s house in the mountains, in the middle of the woods and snow. And it is precisely during a snowfall that he meets Adriano, a mountaineer who lives in an isolated chalet. The hollow face, the full beard, and the most sparkling eyes Amelia has ever seen …
Info, Still beautiful. Linda Brunetta. Harper Collins, 8.90 euros.
2 / Books to read. Philosophy of nostalgia
Why read it
The mechanism is always the same: an object which brings to mind a memory, an emotion. Our search for lost time never ends. So we artificially recreate it: the sound of our smartphone’s camera reproduces the click of an analog camera. The mechanism of nostalgia starts here, from a profound contradiction inherent in the technological promise of the new millennium, which seems to be based on its own about the need to re-imagine the past instead of inventing the future.
We live in a ‘supermarket of memory’ as the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai defined it. To get out of this impasse, the author tries to trace the contours of the invention of ‘nostalgia’. Glimpse the nostalgic effect in the shop windows, TV commercials and cinemas it allows us to re-dimension the phenomenon and to get closer to its understanding. Perhaps it is precisely where the need to go back is felt that the future begins to take shape.
Info. Nostalgia. Lucrezia Ercoli. Ponte alle Grazie. 14 euros.
3 / Books to read. Grandma’s book
Why read it
The book is enchanting: with her irony Alina Bronsky tells the story of families crossing history; the grandma character is so perfect and alive that we can almost see her speaking and admonishing her husband and grandson; we can see her face and her expressions. Everything that makes us smile in this book also makes us think: how can a former Russian dancer be able to understand a world, the German one, and also find herself in a refugee hovel?
Through his ironic attacks on all those who come from a country other than his ownabout the German school system, about German sweets, about their language and the different religions, makes us understand how painful and difficult it can be to see each other and find your place in a place other than the one where we were born. Bronsky’s irony (and his comedic, sometimes hilarious tempos) seems to be the most effective tool for making us laugh, think and move.
4 / Books to read. Childhood
Why read it
Arrives in Italy Childhood, first volume of Tove Ditlevsen’s Copenhagen trilogy: the international literary rediscovery of the year, a great publishing case. The author recounts her tormented life in three sumptuous volumes that have traveled around the world. The Danish Annie Ernaux, author of autofiction before all the others: A keen observer of reality, gifted with a penetrating and intelligent gaze, she has left us three sensational novels, rightly celebrated worldwide.
«How does great literature announce itself – that of series a, that with a capital l? I announce Tove Ditlevsen’s trilogy of memoirs with the emotion typical of when I have a masterpiece in front of me ». In the top 10 books of 2021 second The New York Times.
Info, Childhood. Tove Ditlevsen. Fazi publisher. In bookstores from 24 March
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