Dafter i fifty years often women become invisible and when they realize it it’s too late. But this awareness for Margherita Fiori it turns into a push for an amazing change. As an anonymous employee of the Milan court, efficient but always behind the scenes, she begins to get noticed with colorful clothes, blonde streaks and bright lipsticks.
He is sixty years old, a grown-up son, a divorce behind him and seventeen years of loneliness. An unexpected encounter in the bakery makes her want to have a partner again. A daring hunt for a male begins among sex shops, Tinder and swingers’ clubs. Until her great love returns to her life, the public prosecutor Pietro Pecorari, with whom she has collaborated in the past, who asks her for help in the crime of a university professor with dubious acquaintances.
Margherita is dyslexic, she has always been considered lazy and distracted since elementary school, but precisely dyslexia allows her to see logical connections where others see walls. And thanks to her “plans” (concept maps) she is the one who solves many cases even if others take the credit.
Viola Veloce, pseudonym of Maria Pia Baroncelli, former employee, dyslexic and journalist, former author of the series “Murders on Lunch Break”. Photo Gabriele Giorgio
Margherita’s talent by Viola Veloce is many things together. Cozy crime (a reassuring mystery), a treatise on sexual education for sixty-year-olds, a subtle satire on males of a certain age who refuse to accept changes. How the character of Margherita was born?
It is inspired by personal events, when I decided to return to reconnoitre the male universe. I have met men in difficulty, unaware of their problems. In this fourth age, which Lidia Ravera talks about, they do not accept change, the loss of vigor, the difficulty in sexual relationships which, out of shame, they do not even confide in the doctor.
Margherita transforms from a gray employee to a vamp. What drives you?
Invisibility. Women in the 1970s, when I was young, were not as sexualized as they are today. Back then it wasn’t mandatory to be sexy. Today we have gone too far. And in this scenario I don’t think it’s a bad idea for a lady of a certain age to dress up nicely and go to the hairdresser.
the talent of Margherita di Viola Veloce, Feltrinelli304 pages, €15
She writes about colon therapy, vaginal dryness treatments, vibrators and sex toys in a hilarious way. Where does this ironic look come from?
It comes naturally to me. When I was little they made me read Guareschi, at home we used jokes as a way to exorcise even death. I think irony is a cultural feature of the environment in which I grew up.
In the novel, neurodiversity does not seem like a limit but almost like a talent. Was it important for you to reverse this gaze?
Today some people present dyslexia as a gift, but it is not at all. It’s a lot of effort, especially at school. On the other hand, however, we dyslexics develop forms of resilience. I, like Margherita, have focused on logic, I have become an obsessive cataloguer, I have to put extreme order in my ideas and by doing this I immediately understand if I am faced with errors or weak points of a theory. And then dyslexics have a lot of imagination, I think in images, I see the scenes in my head and then I describe them.
Also thanks to this talent the protagonist solves the case of the murdered professor (and others too), but always remains in the shadows. Why?
Like me, Margherita also has low self-esteem, she prefers to talk as little as possible, stay in a corner, and is never the real protagonist of the investigation. She’s in the second row, as happens to many women. His is an atypical crime.
Do you have a passion for crime novels?
Do you know how the first one was born? I had a very mean and somewhat dense colleague. And I imagined a serial killer killing her. For me it was a satire that targeted workplace dynamics. The only detective stories I’ve read are Raymond Chandler’s because they’re ironic. I read little due to dyslexia and writing is also a struggle, but I have a system.
Can you explain it to us?
I don’t write, but said on the computer. Typing is almost impossible for me, it would take me forever.
