vive to tell it the title of one of the last books by Gabriel García Márquez. The Nobel prize for literature was referring to life, to the years of childhood and youth, those in which the imagination is formed which, over time, would give life to One Hundred Years of Solitude and many other novels.
There comes a time when telling yourself becomes the very essence of life as demonstrated by the four authors chosen for the books to read of the week.
The success. Obesity. Patricentric culture. The happiness of little things. Pens that describe themselves with an open heart. To inspire and leave a mark.
1 / Books to read. One kilo at a time
Why read it
«For a long, too long time I had a monster inside that ate a lot of me, managing to drag me to hell. But what he engulfed wasn’t all, because I’ve always been more. Perhaps, from a certain point of view, my being “too much”, my being redundant, saved me».
Irene Vella, journalist, blogger and author, signs a memoir in which she recounts her back and forth life in the hell of obesity.
«It is difficult to inhabit a body that does not look like you; it is devastating to look at each other, seek each other and not recognize each other, because each of your features loses its original profile, being engulfed by a circumstantial smile, what you get used to showing the world» he already writes in the first pages of the book.
At one point it weighs 106 kilos. He understands that he is 44 too many. She gives up the job she loves most in the world – the correspondent for Mediaset – because her “being fat” gives rise to atrocious jokes such as: “Irene, your big face on TV crashes the camera, maybe it’s better if you don’t take up again”.
“Girls… Irene we make her sit in the front, in the car, because she is the oldest and the biggest, otherwise he will not enter behind”.
She has a husband on dialysis. She gives him a kidney. He moves from Cesenatico to Dolo, to Venice. He begins to grind anxiety. And he eats. She’s not curvy, she explains, she’s fat.
His soul is hungry. Her tipping point is June 13, 2019, when a photographer sends her pictures of her that she took. She replies: “This isn’t me, I no longer recognize myself. I’m sorry I can’t talk now, see you later”.
She decides to undergo sleeve gastrectomy, a hormonal restrictive surgery. It’s the beginning of a new life.
«We are not wrong when we are thin, we are not wrong when we are fat, we are not wrong when we are normal weight.
We are wrong when we stop loving ourselves, when we allow others to hurt us, but also when we hurt ourselves, with our internalized fat phobia that doesn’t allow us to see our beauty,” she writes.
Info. Irene Vella. One kilo at a time. Feltrinelli.
2/ Books to read. Like a flower in a notebook
Why read it
The cover was made with clippings from the author’s fifth grade notebooks. Isa Grassano, journalist, blogger and writer, go back to the bookstore with Like a flower in a notebook.
A bildungsroman starring Hope and Rosa, two sisters whose relationship is somewhat curious and letters are written to each other, rigorously by hand. In a double register of Speranza as an adult, 50 years old, and Speranza as a child, 10 years old.
Everything takes place between Basilicata, the birthplace of Grassani, the Romagna Riviera and Lugano.
“A sister is a sister. And she keeps us company in thoughts. Sometimes it changes our lives ”, she reads in the cover screech.
“Like a flower in a notebook means childhood,” explains the author. «The initial inspiration for this new novel of mine is true and is linked to my family – but also nostalgia for the eighties, the best ever, even for those who have never lived them.
It means the fatigue of pre-adolescence, the desire to believe it, to dream but also to maintain that attitude of a child who still makes sketches of the little flowers on a sheet».
The text highlights how fears and insecurities are almost never proportional to people’s chronological age and, therefore, each of us can recognize ourselves. And at the same time he dwells on the tiring complexity of pre-adolescence, on how one must learn to survive, to defend oneself with one’s heart, on how important it is to continue to believe in it “And if you believe in something, you’re already halfway there”.
Between the pages, archaic, solitary, generous Basilicata, where the sun “tinges the sky with shades of red, yellow, orange, as if it were a crochet tile”, where a confidence turns into gossip, where time seems having stopped.
And here is 1982 with all the things that come to mind (the perfumed pens, the crystal ball, the erasers that reproduced the brioche; the payphones, the covers of Bonnie Bonnets).
And then the wooden and Bakelite school desks, the single teacher for all hours in class, the chatter of the boys, the shouting as they leave, the courtyards flooded with continuous beams of light, the gastronomy that tastes of grandmothers, aunts, wives, of dishes “of memory”.
A book with a final twist almost yellow, a gift from the author to the innocence of childhood, but also to its cruelty.
Info. Isa Grassano. Like a flower in a notebook. Giraldi editor
3/ Books to read. Immaculate or of the divine self-conception
Why read it
Immacolata lives and works in Milan. His existence is a continuous balancing act between career and family in the syncopated rhythm of the big city. An event will change everything: suddenly she is facing a pregnancy not only unsought, but the result of impossible circumstances.
The first of the three diaries of Immacolata – which covers a period of exactly one year – describes the evolution of this inexplicable expectation that seems to drastically divide its reality between facts governed by Good and misdeeds dominated by Evil.
A dichotomy that is never clear-cut, chiaroscuro, in the succession of events that the protagonist will have to face despite having to continue to carry out her routine tasks. She will meet new friends and new enemies, her love will unexpectedly peep into her life, she will be called to believe, to hope, to fight. Her best weapon will always remain irony, which permeates her entire diary.
«I wonder at which crossroads I lost my way to success. Then, as I write, I think of my little joys: the color of the pink roses in Piazza Sant’Agostino, the yellow ones in Parco Solari and the tiny, perfect ones to look like sugar and carved by hand that swarm decomposed near the police station next to the prison of San Vittore.
I listen to my baby’s regular breathing, healthy and strong, and my elderly dog, panting and uncertain. Soft sounds that draw this very hot night, punctuated by the sultry laughter of the South American pizza chefs opposite»
Genoese by birth but Milanese by adoption, Francesca Sassoli she grinded twenty years of radio and television journalism, she was a presenter on weekends for Rete Due of Italian Swiss Radio and was the protagonist of Francescaonline, a journalistic experiment for which he lived for a year buying only goods and services on the web.
He loves animals, art, good music. He hates cooking, indecision and useless talk. In Milan he lives with his son Filippo and many, too many books. This is her first novel.
It will be presented on March 23 at 19 from And… breeze in via Garigliano in Milan.
Info. Francesca Sassoli. Immaculate or of the divine self-conception. Capponi editor.
4/ Books to read. The rebels who are changing the world
Why read it
«This book was born in Haifa, in a hospital station in the oncological pavilion, tamong the smell of disinfectant and the white coats of doctors and nurses. It was written in my head as I watched my older sister, Rauia, who was about to die.
Once beautiful and energetic, now she weighed little more than a child, but she fought her last battle without fear or surrender.
His eyes they continued to glow with the same unyielding determination that had enlightened them all their lives. Anyone who passed by her bed could not fail to be fascinated by her resilience, that inner strength that prevailed over the weakness of the body. (…)
This book is for all women and men willing to change.
People like Rauia and like us, who often feel crushed by the gears of life and fight, perhaps in silence, against structured mechanisms and patriarchal cultures that have tried to oppress and silence them for centuries.»
Rula Jebreal returns to tell how and how much women represent the hope of a better future for this planet through the unique and extraordinary stories of a group of women, rebels of our days, who have triggered epochal changes in our present.
From the science to sport, from journalism, to politics, to art, these women are laying the foundations for a more equal world, destroying the stigma of gender and paving the way for future generations.
Among them is a scientist who has made her intelligence available to society and has been tirelessly dedicated for years to hindering the spread of pseudoscientific ideas.
A chef who uses her talent to encourage solidarity and environmental sustainability. A hacker who became a minister, who with her vision found a way to protect and strengthen democracy.
An athlete fighting against sexism and prejudice in sport. There are two courageous journalists who challenged bloody regimes, a photojournalist who with her images forces us to face the hypocrisy of our worlda writer who has dedicated her life to helping the women of the self-styled Islamic State.
And an artist whose works denounce violence and shout the rebellion and courage of women.
Nine rebels who redraw the boundaries of what “could be done” using the strength of a determination that does not let itself be stopped by any obstacle. They believed they could change the rules and they did. Their victories are here to inspire us. Their defeats inflame us with a renewed desire to dare, to never give up.
Info. Rula Jebreal. The rebels who are changing the world. Longanesi
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