Qhen a book by a colleague you respect comes outwhose article you read with admiration and intellectual pleasure, your heart expandswe prepare ourselves for one of the most beautiful joys of life, light.
It always hits me the hatred and envy that surround journalists online: not criticism argue, which are always useful, but rancid smell of poorly digested food.
Instead, I am consoled by the affection of many readers, of ordinary people who are happy to have good journalists in their country just like having good actors or good tilers (according to Monicelli, cinema is a minor art, just like ceramics, an art that however inhabits people’s lives, can make it worse or better; and perhaps journalism also falls into this category).
It is therefore with joy that I read the new book by Fabrizio Roncone, The power of killAnd (Marsilio), right from the cover, beautiful. The protagonist is once again Marco Paraldi: a cross between Fabrizio Bentivoglio – in his external appearance, including the white quiff and the painful attitude that drives women crazy – and Roncone himself.
And the protagonist is always her, Chicca, a Roman noblewoman who is madly in love with Paraldi. The two have a history, but they don’t make love. And this opens the scene not only to the many couples who no longer make love, but also about people who love each other, sometimes they even love each other, but they don’t transform feelings into sex.
Perhaps Paraldi separates sex from love. Maybe Chicca doesn’t find the right way to make the feeling evolve. I have known, also through readers’ letters, many stories of people united by a very close bond which however was not physical. Sometimes they are stories that enrich lives.
More often they are a source of frustration and unhappiness. If certain things don’t happen right away, if the spark flickers but doesn’t ignite, there must be a reason. But in the last chapter of the novel, in one night of an unusually snowy Roman Christmas, Chicca shows up unexpectedly at Marco’s house…
All articles by Aldo Cazzullo.
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