TOhigh school is sixteen and divides his Days between school, Tiktok and friends Angiu and dog. When the maternal grandfather moves to live at homehis life changes. Mother Marta becomes enslaved to the father and that man to whom he should also love despotic, in need of care and manipulator. She observes the many small details of that home revolution and does not understand them, are part of a distant generation (not surprisingly the name Alice seems to resume the character of the famous novel by Lewis Carroll).
Everything revolves around him: the television on “because grandfather is pleased to see the news when he eats”, the stripped steps in the house because “grandfather is taking the nap”, the tour of carers because it is not self -sufficient in an endless “su”, “turns”, “fold”, “stop”. He who smokes and fills the asoneri making the air unpleasant. All in a close dialogue filtered by language at the time of social networks where every word is a subtext (“let it smoke in the house?” I ask mom. “I would say yes.” The subtext is Alice, try to realize the reality that surrounds you).
The anger for that “monster“, That demon called parental love that eats the present. Yet it will be that Rudeness who put it on the road to a family secret. It is titled The summer I killed my grandfather the new novel of the dramaturga and writer Giulia Lombezzi, 38 years old, already a finalist at the Calvino 2020 award with The unstable substance (2021).
Giulia Lombezzi was born in Milan in 1987. She is playwright and writer. He was a finalist at the Calvino 2020 Prize with the unstable substance (Perrone Editore).
The summer I killed my grandfather by Giulia Lombezzi
His is a book that overturns stereotypes on the treatment. Where is the idea born, is there something autobiographical?
The novel is a “What if”, a technique used in the theater, that is, it imagines if a certain character had taken another path. I put together stories of friends and acquaintances. I felt the urgency of subverting the archetype of care, the almost horror extremization of taking someone at home as a “debt” against a father or mother and the depersonalization to which a caregiving managed without the due protection can bring.
Have you lived closely such an experience?
I report the mental recording of a series of things that I saw happening, but in reality my complaint starts from the fact that no one is really ready to take care of a family member. We need a network of professionals, you cannot always make to be arranged within the walls of the house.
The summer that I killed my grandfather of Giulia Lombezzi, Bollati Boringhieri, 318 pages, € 17
“Come that falls, monkeys that eat, skate, Korean who sings”: he lines the moments on Alice’s Tiktok with irony.
I know the language of the boys well teaching theater and creative writing in superiors and middle school. The world view of teenagers is very far from our preconceptions. It is a generation full of humor. It inspires me.
There is also talk of verbal violence in the book, the often “normalized” one in families. The grandfather is identified with his profession, “the butcher”.
Fortunately, the collective will is changing. The anger is always strong, the words help, programs that involve children from middle school are developing: what they call “emotional education”, in short.
Tells the non -said of every family.
I like the fact that the internal narrative of each nucleus contains shadow areas and completely reworked areas.
It uses a lot to dialogues, is it a choice?
I am a certain pillar of my writing. I am influenced by the theater.
What is literature for Giulia Lombezzi?
I have a certainty: I don’t want to console. I don’t intend to teach. I don’t want to moralize. I want to make people laugh, but also make you think.
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