Un libro ti salverà by Erika Swyler, The Book of Speculation, in english, published by Garzanti has been a book I felt a lot. Long Island: Simon Watson is an innocuous and nice librarian of the local library of his town. Constantly worried of losing his job because of a constant lack of funds, he is in love with Alice, a colleague and the daughter of Frank, his neighbor and family-friend since he was little.
One day returning home Simon finds a heavy package containing an old book of a caravan of artists, a sort of book where in general the boss of the caravan in particular, here, mr.Peabody annotated the main and most important relevant facts in a daily base.
It would not be correct to call this caravan of artists circus, because circus still didn't exist but there were a lot of interesting attractions as the ones you find in a circus.
Simon finds this book fascinating and at the same time, considering its potential value a weird and unexpected arrival and gift.
He decides to call the book antiquarian Churchwarry&Sons for trying to understand why they decided to send to him such an important homage. The antiquarian, mr Churchwarry reveals him that maybe there are direct connections in that book with part of his family.
To Simon the book became an attracting and scaring object at the same time, because he discovers that all, all the ladies of his family soon or late left the world returning to the water, let's use this euphemism.
They were nymphs, magical creatures as the ones told in Russian's fairy-tales.
In the past someone cursed the tarots passed through the various women of the family for protecting someone else: doing that a massive curse attracted all the female members of the family in an endless spiral of tragical repetition of events.
I read tarots in the past and it is absolutely true that when an existential moment is sad or happy and you repeat tarots, cards that you will see are more or less with some little differences that can "define" better the situation that main ones.
At some point there is the arrival of the sister of Simon, Enola with Doyle her boyfriend; Enola works in a park reading the tarots being a story-teller; also the rest of the ladies of this family including their mother and excluding Simon, worked in a circus.
Simon's trouble at work, the discovery of a lot of past situations, the story starts to be complicated sad and plenty of lies.
Maybe the symbol of the re-born of the existences of Simon, Enola, Doyle and Alice is represented by the decadence of house where Simon lives in. He would want to restore it but he doesn't have sufficient money for doing it and he lives in an area where sea "eats" portion of land and houses as well.
He doesn't want to leave this old house because he can still "sees" his parents, he can still "feels" them and he can still appreciates memories. There are corners of the USA where memories are important.
Intense, trust me when I tell you that reading this book hasn't been a joke because I felt the story, the magical part, and the sadness of existences when there are too many hidden secrets revealed all at once and the protagonists need to reconstruct themselves and who they thought that they were and they were not including all the manipulations of adults in their existences when children and...adults.
Highly recommended for understand the human soul and the unwritten rules of life.
I thank Garzanti for the physical copy of this book.
Anna Maria Polidori
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