CLike many Italians of the latest generations, Marta, the protagonist of this novel, is an expata young woman who after her studies decided to leave the country in search of a new and different place, where she could build a better future. She also cut ties with a too-perfect but boring boyfriend and she flew away, choosing one of the much mythologized Northern countries, the aseptic and highly organized Netherlands.
But now that we’re approaching forty, that well-paid job in a multinational company didn’t give her satisfaction or stability, but only an infinite sense of alienation. A physical and mental illness that yesterday would have been called nervous exhaustion or stress, today is instead identified in a specific category, burnout.
An illness certified by the doctor, which also allows her to stay at home and continue to receive a good part of her salary. So, oscillating between passivity and rebellion, while struggling with pill and alcohol abuse, casual sex and lack of relationships, Marta finds the news story of Andreas Lubitz: that pilot who deliberately crashed in 2015 a Germanwings plane, a suicide that dragged 147 passengers and the rest of the crew to their deaths. For her it becomes an obsession, but what is the hidden connection with her life?
Giulia Sara Miori pushes her protagonist in a continuous swing, making her slide without signs of continuity from reality to the darkest fantasies, a way of reflecting on contemporary anxieties and unhappiness.
Why are you interested in “burnout” syndrome?
In part it is something that touched me closely: I too lived for several years in Holland, I had work experience in large multinationals, where some of my episodes of more psychological than physical illness were immediately classified with that word. A pathology that doesn’t exist for me is a convenient label to medicalize and marginalize people, without ever questioning the system.
How did it become the inspiration for a novel?
The idea sparked when I found a connection with Andreas Lubitz. I struggled to understand how someone who is described as “normal” could suddenly make such a destructive choice. He too had been diagnosed with burnout disorder. From here I started to build something that is very far from autobiography: I don’t believe in literature as therapy and self-consolation.
“Nothing to declare” by Giulia Sara Miori, Marsilio192 pages, €17
The protagonist experiences a great personal crisis.
Yes, she finds herself overwhelmed by the rules of life that society imposes on her, by a search for happiness at all costs, but at a certain point she reaches the limit and chooses to get out of the game. A form of silent rebellion: even if many contradictions coexist within her, there is a strong sense of shame, the fear of having done everything wrong, combined with a real hunger for authenticity.
Do you see your choice to leave Italy as a positive pursuit or an escape?
A bit of both, I think. Like many of us Millennials, she grew up with the inviting myth of being abroad, but then when you see things up close, you resize them and come up against the end of an illusion. It is not easy to take root in a different, partly hostile reality: the Nordic language, habits and characters, the impossibility of forming real and non-superficial relationships.
Is loneliness the worst obstacle to overcome?
Yes, but this is a more general problem, it seems to me that relationships are the other sore point of this generation: I don’t know when it happened, but it’s as if they have fallen apart, they have lost consistency. Roles certainly have something to do with it, the masculine in crisis, but not only that: we live isolated, completely disconnected from each other. When Marta tries to build a loving relationship with a man, in the end it turns out to be impossible, toxic, a sterile power game. They never manage to get close, to really touch each other.
What role have the use of social media and the expansion of virtual worlds played?
There is a strong tendency to hide in a social bubble, but I would combine it with something that started much earlier, a crisis of ideals, the ferocious capitalism that pushed us to believe that only individual well-being counts, forgetting that we are a social species. So we have created these extreme forms of reality, which exclude contact or direct confrontation: it seems easier to invent a relationship with a chatbot or a robot doll that always agrees with you.
The space that divides reality and fantasy is labile, almost imperceptible…
It was functional to the character: I wanted to describe a conscience that gradually crumbles, loses the sense of reality and slips into a hallucinatory perception. But perhaps surrealism is a type of narrative that comes naturally to me: I don’t think there is such a clear division between our everyday world and the imagination, the dream.