When I started to read Se I Pesci
I tell you that I love so badly the location choosen by the writer: Sanremo. Liguria is one of the most stunning italian regions that we have; not only. It's warm most of the time. As Luca writes, there are 300 days of sun in a year. It says a lot. I visited it a lot of years ago, spending some time to Alassio as well I can tell you that they're fascinating, beautiful locations. A Paradise. For what I remember prices are not exxagerated at all, and...It's warm.
How nice!
Who is the protagonist of this book? His name is Samuele he is in his 30s; he is a reporter for a local online magazine. He was so lucky because he was in grade to being paid from the beginning, with a regular contract thanks to a beautiful video created for an event. Samuele is specialized in following events. Substantially the most important one is the Festival of the Italian Song, but apart it, thanks to the good weather, there are appointments in every moment of the year.
Samuele is still not certain of his future. He is in love for example for advertising; online ones; the ones passing on YouTube; or before to seeing a movie and so on interests him so badly. He would want to try to launch himself into that career, but it's difficult. This society it's difficult. There are no certainties; what it is true yesterday it is not anymore real today.
Samuele lives alone with Galileo, his gold fish, called Leo.
It's with Leo that he talks most of the time and these dialogues are absolutely the moments more beauty of this book, because the mirror of our times.
Once Samuele will tell to Leo: "I envy you. Your silence is more elegant than our chats... Today clatters in social medias, a continuous barking lost in the ether, provoking a disconnection between what it is real and what it is virtual, prisoners of a collective enourmus lie."
Samuele thinks that he is "wrong" somewhere: he doesn't have certainties; his parents were honest with him. They wouldn't never have wanted for him this kind a life, but they would have dreamt for him a workplace as every other normal person.
Most of the time Samuele is strained, because he would want to try to understand his future, but that future is plenty of uncertaties. He is not so sure that he wants to continue the profession of reporter, but at the same time he doesn't know if his future will be in the advertising. His projects rejected all the times.
Samuele is appreciated because of his loving character by everyone. The caretaker where he lives is a lady of 80 years, mrs Verrando.
Born in Sanremo she will tell him how fascinated she was for a city with such a blue sea, boats, beautiful estates, gardens and the powerful love and admiration felt for this city by British Lords and North Europeans attracted by the sweet weather of the Riviera Ligure.
She married a man who sent her beautiful love-letters when they were married.
Samuele works also at the Astronomic Observatory of Perinaldo. Cassini was the most important ligurese astronomer and everyone go proud of him. Looking at the stars, as everyone know, there are many notions in the book, we see our past, the light reflected hundreds of years ago, for staying "young". Men are composed by stardust; maybe for this reason they look at the sky, asking for a wish; hoping for something of beauty in their existences. Because we are made of that same nature and we shine and we cant think at obscurity and darkness as human condition.
It was a night like another one, when Samuele, profoundly open and friendly met at the end of a meeting of interested people at Perinaldo a girl. She is alone. Elegant, beauty, sensual. He thinks that he is dreaming. Abruptly, all his uncertainties regarding life don't exist anymore. There is this powerful now. The girl is misterious; and this component, the one of mystery will be in grade to capture the imagination of Samuele per months.
Considering that after the visit, just for her, at the Observatory, she didn't have any place where to go but she had also to eat a dish of pasta, Samuele invites her at his house.
He would have prepared tagliolini al pesto, a specialty of the area.
They ate and drunk, talking and staying relaxed. When they went to bed Samuele, tired for the emotions experienced, and also, considering that Emma was in the bathroom closed the eyes, and the day after, Emma and her mysteries...gone forever, apart for a kiss in the mirror of his bathroom left as memory that Emma realistically passed for his house and she was not the fruit of too much wine.
This fact put Samuele in a profound chaos.
For Samuele, a good soul, not a cynical one, starts a tremendous moment of perdition. Who was Emma? He fell in love for her, although there was just a hug; nothing else. Not a kiss. Nothing, nothing. But he understood that the girl entered powerfully in its imaginery world and also in his dreams. His life became a nightmare.
Iacopo is a friend of him completely different. He is a real playboy; he changes girl every two-three weeks; when situation becomes too heavy he invents some places where he must goes, a trip for work, in grade to keep him away for a lot of months so good-bye baby.
When he understands that Samuele is losing the head for a girl, not understanding his feelings, he tries his best. A new girl, strong discussions, but there is nothing to do.
Ilenia is another friend. Romantic, she is a great baker of wonderful local dishes, like the famous Baci of Sanremo. You find the recipes at page 192-193. Yum, they must be delicious!
Ilenia will try her best, suggesting him a lot of modalities for searching for this Emma, still a phantom in grade to put Samuele in a depressive, hallucinating state.
Mysteries after all are not at the end of a trip but in the situations that are put in motion will tell to Samuele someone.
At the same time Samuele speaks again with Leo, his gold fish. "You are looking at me but I don't know if you see me. But...Sometimes we, humans are looking at a lot of things but without to see them realistically. ...We are tragics and comicals at the same time and densperately humans. Maybe we are not creatures destined to be happy. We are in war with labor, and anxiety. Because it's always there, close to us, the embarassment of not being good, of not being in grade to realize anything, of not being strong enough..."
During a food-session eating delicious farinata with the caretaker and many compliments about his good character and manner, the 80 years old lady remembers him of not losing any day of joy. Because, after all life is like a farinata made with two simple ingredients: water and chickpeas flour. It has simple, precise answers at big questions.
Samuele is an enthusiastic, but when he starts a new project, if he doesn't see any result, becomes pessimistic.
At some point, and starting from the fact that Emma told him that she was an illustrator of childrens's books, Samuele thought that he had discovered who that Emma was, although when he will contact her he will discover that she was not the one he was searching for.
Emma becomes his obession; depression creates a good and fertile creative state in Samuele, noticed also by his own grumpy editor.
An editor not sure about the future of the online magazine and with the idea of firing at some point a desperate young man without any certainty anymore.
Speaking with Leo: "Our mouth is plenty of projects, although we miss the courage of capturing what it's ours, taking what realistically we wish. This world kills fantasy, takes our emotions, emptying them....Sometimes I think that I won't never have a future. That I won't never be ready. That I won't never leave a sign." But is it possible not dreaming at all? No, tells Samuele to Leo. It's indispensible to dream also when someone could steal our dreams, also when dream won't never become anything. "How can we renounce at these little illusions that let us think that maybe one day we will concretize something? How could we stop dreaming?"
Fired at work, with an advertising project pretty important with a close deadline, Samuele is continuously more devastated. At some point he decides he wants to keep forever with him the kiss of Emma impressed in the mirror and buys a chemical lotion in grade to save it. His friends are always more worried.
Ilenia at some point, although optimistical by nature, imagine a different future: she thinks at St.Valentine not anymore celebrated sending texts or messages via whatsup, but with real cards, real letters, a real box of chocolate, real flowers. Sanremo is a teacher in this sense.
I admit I lived it, teddy bears, box of chocolates, letters and romantic greeting cards and it is priceless, I agree.
Fired and desperate, without work, Samuele imagines an homeless existence. He doesn't know what will happen of him. He speaks with Leo, all worried: "Folks are scared of themselves...We influence each other hoping that something would change, but nothing changes. Never."
Not only: Samuele speaking with Leo focuses on time.
"We miss time. Time for thinking at the real things of our existence, time for being happy giving the right value at this complicated thing that it is the existence."
After all most of us tells Samuele to Leo are "Like you, Leo. Thrown in a transparent vase, without to have chosen it." Prisoners in a word, of circumstancies created by others, by ourselves.
But to Samuele men in this water starts to live with a certain spirit of adaptability.
"We grope thinking that we can't become what we dreamt and we....suffocate..."
Once fired, Samuele, thanks to Leo, his fish, will send a special and original project at the advertising society ending up in the rose of the five finalists ones.
One of the finalists convocated at Palazzo Barberini in Rome is his special phantom girl...Emma.
It is a clarifying chat that one. Emma will tell him of her uncertainties: "They have stolen our dreams and hope, cheating us, convincing us that working for free is the normality...Not only they don't permit us to build anything, but they have also let us lose the desire of reborning , and it's unfair."
Samuele is a boy with a large heart in grade of sharing the luck arrived at Palazzo Barberini. His project in fact is chosen and his future brilliant, for what a future at the moment can be brilliant.
But he will share with Emma his happiness, his future, and his work, recognizing that working in team is better, understanding also that life is not a joke and help is important.
I don't know if it's because Ammirati works as responsible at the press office of the Theater Ariston, so surrounded by music, romanticism, love, the sum of this book is of an intensity devastating, although, apparently this one would be a quick reading because apart for the felt reflections dedicated to Leo the gold fish, the rest of the writing is quick, populated by a lot of dialogues. But, the thematic treated are not a joke: they are like a punch in the stomach.
Being a journalist I know what it means, so I also suffered because of this reason.
Se I Pesci Guardassero le Stelle, If Fishes Would Look at The Stars is also beauty because in the intense sufference and perdition of the main characters, there is some hope. Not certainties. Some hopes.
Old ones as you will see have certainties, but after all they didn't live in a crazy moment as we do, I always say, and there was a complete different humanity, fruit of poverty, war, misery and real values. When you see a real devastation, you put aside egoisms; you just want to embrace your dear ones and your neighbors with great love and friendship; some young ones built their own shell for protecting themselves from the hurts of life.
Who haven't been in grade to do that, or simply, didn't put any mask to their persons, maybe will live a more straining existence, who knows?
A mirror of our times, highly recommended to everyone for the strong and impacting thematic.
I would want to suggest to the author of creating a Saint Valentine's movement promoting real letters, greetings cards, and little gifts leaving alone the internet for once.
I thank DeaPlaneta for the physical copy of this book.
Anna Maria Polidori
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