Serena Dandini (photo by Gianmarco Chieregato).
ANDxtraterrestrial it is an old song by Eugenio Finardi from 1978 which still has its own charm. It is the story of a boy who looks at the sky from his bedroom and invokes a possible alien, begging him to come to Earth to take him away from a world in which he feels alone and full of fears.
«Extraterrestrial come find me… I want a planet to start over on». It could still be the invocation of many in these turbulent times between endless wars and a planet devastated by climate change without hope for the young generations.
Now the idea that we can travel into space and even colonize Mars no longer belongs to science fiction and there are already those who plan these saving pilgrimages in the galaxy towards the red planet, adventurous journeys that neither I nor Eugenio Finardi will perhaps be able to see but have already entered literature.
That’s why the novel by Deborah Willis My girlfriend on Mars (Bollati Boringhieri) I would no longer define it as a dystopian story but rather an amused and ironic exploration of our contemporaneity.
The 40-year-old Canadian author has already collected a number of awards for his previous collections of short stories and made his novel debut with an original story that tells the story of Amber, a thirty-year-old from Vancouver who to give meaning to his inconclusive life he decides to participate in a reality TV show called Mars Now: the two winners, a man and a woman, will participate in the first trip to Mars sponsored by billionaire Geoff Task.
“My Girlfriend on Mars” by Deborah Willis (Bollati Boringhieri).
Kevin, her boyfriend and longtime partner, is amazed by this choice also because, as is clearly specified in the regulation it would be a one-way trip since technology is not yet able to guarantee a return.
Kevin is a young man stuck in the present like many others and has long since given up on ambitions and dreams, he lives on the sofa between TV series and taking care of the marijuana plants he grows at home together with his girlfriend: the only source of income that allows the couple to pay the rent. Experience with hydroponic crops will be one of the qualities that will allow Amber to climb the selection list for the coveted interstellar journey.
I won’t tell you any further so as not to ruin the surprise but I guarantee you together with Alice Munro (who greatly appreciated Willis’ debut) that this unconventional story, in addition to entertaining you, will tell you about our present much more than many television talk shows that they claim to explain reality to us.
All articles by Serena Dandini.
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