THERene has clear ideas, a plan for the futurebelongs to the Turin well and has an intellectual and cumbersome mother. Ottavia comes from the suburbs, her family is penniless and her mother lets her grow up alone. In high school they find each other, they remain stuck to each other even in university, albeit in different cities. Irene makes Ottavia feel special, capable of great things. But without her friend Irene seems to lose her goals and ambitions. Until something happens, their relationship frays and seems to succumb.
In Future days Gabriella Dal Lago (in her third novel) brings her protagonists Irene and Ottavia back and forth in timebetween Europe and the United States, for tell the story of two thirty-year-olds struggling with adult lifethe problems of those who expatriate to pursue a dream discovering, perhaps, that that dream was an illusion. When her mother gets ill and Irene returns to Turin, her friend’s memories surface unexpectedly, especially after meeting Pietro, the boy she had a crush on in high school but who then chose Ottavia.
Sometimes it is difficult to accept yourself for what you have become and forget the romantic idea of yourself that you built as a teenager. But for Irene and Ottavia it is the only way out to find a new and equally intense relationship.
Gabriella Dal Lago, from Turin, wrote Estate Caldssima and the essay The Most Brave. Competition and sisterhood among the top of the class. The new Future Days is already being translated in numerous countries. Photo Antonella Castelnuovo @mykemical
What are these two friends like?
Like the sun and the moon. Irene works very hard to be good, to reach the goal she has set for herself. Ottavia (aka Otti) seems to do well in everything she does, she is effortlessly brilliant and charismatic.
She alternates points of view and we see Ottavia through Irene’s eyes and vice versa. The reader wonders, at times, who is telling the truth. Were you looking for this disorientating effect?
In the first part, I enjoyed making the reader imagine Ottavia. And then in the second part we turn everything upside down. Because it is in these pages that the resentment, envy, admiration and annoyance that Irene actually feels for her friend emerge. Otti sees the harshness of their friendship, Irene romanticizes it. The first is more willing to accept the change that growth brings, the second remains attached to the idea it had of the other person.
Does adulthood give a second chance, does it allow us to change the role we had as teenagers in high school?
I think so. But as Zadie Smith says, your inner judge is often your teenage self.
Future days by Gabriella Dal Lago, Einaudi288 pages, €19.50
Are today’s thirties a sort of middle ground, between adolescence and maturity?
Yes. It’s the time in life when you start meeting your friends’ children and going to their parents’ funerals. It’s a confusing time, the twenties were clearer.
The protagonists are reluctant to feel like adults and succumb to a certain performance pressure in order to excel at what they do. How much is collective and generational in their story?
These reflections often appear in cultural products aimed at thirty-year-olds, from films to TV series to books. And we often talk about it among ourselves too. When we were teenagers they told us to go to classical high school, which “prepares the ruling class of the future”, they told us “if you work hard you will make it”. It’s not true, it’s a myth. Today, thirty-year-olds, who always feel in competition, ask themselves “but do I really like what I’m doing? Do I want a life like this?”.
Almost all the characters are expats, living abroad. Why?
I just looked around. Many of my peers have left and started a family in another country, while many foreigners are in Turin to study. However, I liked to describe these movements from the point of view of those who return, like Irene, and must re-establish a relationship with their city.
Irene observes Ottavia especially through social media, where she has become a very followed influencer. Did you want to talk about the way in which digital media change our relationship with others?
Otti uses them in a distorting way, she plays a character other than herself. For Irene they are a window to spy on her, to look for clues about her life, but then she feels stupid when she realizes that in reality she is not seeing anything true.
What is friendship like after thirty?
It requires a lot of commitment, you can no longer rely on the routine of school or university. We prefer to put more care into romantic relationships.
To repair a relationship, is it enough to forget the past?
No, the only solution is to change. We are more used to accepting it for love stories. We think that the end of a romantic relationship affects everything – such as economic conditions, relationships with others – but even the end of important friendships can transform the geography of one’s world.