L'ombra del Potere by Viveca Sten

 I love every book written by Viveca Sten and this latest one, L'Ombra

del Potere is another wonderful one.

The impression is that the island of Sandhamn is not a boring place at all. 

Nora is back to the island with his family, Jonas and her daughter Julia, for the summer vacation. She is happy because she received recently a promotion and life was great. She is of course, pretty soon informed that in the place there is a newcomer: someone from London, mr Carsten Jonsson. He is a business man and decided to buy a big, immense and incredibly rich property that he is restorating for him and his family. The character of Carsten is complex, his business are pretty diversified like also the people with which he interacts with. Tensions with the people of the island are constantly increasing; dead animals are found close to their house as an admonition, but also other unpleasant things happen always more often. For trying to resolve this story, in an island always more exclusivist, Carsten decides to organize a party. The party in itself is a success but at the end someone will burn the depandance and someone is found dead. Considering that the man died carbonized at first it is impossible to recognize the sex of the person. Maybe a man because of some early indications, but...At first investigators thought that the man could be Carsten... Carsten is not living at all a financial moment pretty happy, let's use this euphemism, but was found alive. There are other problems in his existence and the failure is the cause, for this man of an escalation of violent acts started into his family. Celia is horrified, because her husband has never been violent. She would want to go away but she doesn't know how to do that.

Indagating and investigating appear clear something: that Carsten hasn't been grown in an environment (we speak of work) ethical; all the opposite.

Celia of course, after the violent altercation with the husband, because of their kid, is not fine at all; Maria, her babysitter is also leaving because Carsten has been too clear with her as well. She had seen what happened the day before between them.

Alone, isolated, with a violent man.

But Carsten in this moment doesn't have any pale idea of continuing the altercation with the wife. He knows that someone is cheating him and he must speak with him, trying to change the contract that, apparently he should sign...

Celia is found in miserable state, while Carstem will reach a new enemy...

At the end the story will be completely different from the one imagined by the investigators; maybe more sad, and more important, the gesture of someone changed the existences of most people in the island.

Another intense book by Viveca Sten that you won't put down till the end.

Highly recommended.

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

L'Esecutore by Ariel Magnus

 L'Esecutore by

Ariel Magnus published by Guanda is shocking under many ways. 

This one is the story of Ricardo Klement better known as Adolf Eichmann the person who organized the mass deportation of Jewish in the concentration camps during the war.

I hadn't never read anything about Eichmann. In my mind there is Mengele, the evil of Auschwitz, that finger, that right, left, life or death, destiny for tons of deported human beings.

Unfortunately Eichmann wasn't immediately captured and escaped in Argentina, a place, thanks to Peron and Evita, pretty clement with these individuals.

It's absolutely shocking that people accused of crimes like these ones continued their existence as if it wouldn't never happened anything. 

The existence of this man was characterized by hallucinations; his dreams were agitated; he could not forget his assassinations just for fun, he couldn't forget how to be cruel also in his new common life; I was shocked when, opening the door at a girlfriend of jewish origins of his biggest son Klaus (for everyone Klement/Eichmann was the uncle of Klaus) he thought that he could kill the girl with simplicity for later burning the body so that nothing could be found. Pity that there were other people at home...

Eichmann didn't never develop common thoughts as a decent man has. No: his memories were only in the past; that past spent in serving Hitler and his demoniacal project: the complete extirpation from Earth of all people of Jewish origins and all the other ones, with problems, mentals or physicals.

One of these individuals, Gregor, maybe for remembering the old times, practiced abortions in Argentina. In the past, that one was the doctor who destroyed the existence of million of children practising "medical studies" on twins. Now, he decided that it was better to end the existences of babies before their arrival on Earth. 

What it is shocking is their cruelty, their thoughts. There is no traces of humanity.

In the cover of this book you see Eichmann with a tender rabbit, immediately killed in the water once the Polaroid was taken for not leaving LIVING witnesses of this picture.

This man like all the other men of Hitler in Argentina was working for building infrastructures. 

Eichmann  considered Argentinian people an inferior race. At some point he started some breeding of chickens, hens and rabbits but what scared me were his thoughts regarding the project, his comparison with the years spent in building camps where most people lost their existences...

His brain continued to repeat as a mantra what happened during the war. Every object, every place, every person reminded him his old existence and starting from these series of anedocts the writer tell this absurd existence with extreme profoundity. The writer has been immensely great entering in the criminal mind of this individual, remembering the hallucinating past but also his peaceless present. Drinking, to Eichmann was an activity useful and appreciated for removing from the mind what he saw; imagines of dead people, destroyed, burned, killed. But no, please, do not misunderstand: he didn't feel any kind of compassion for them. No, no: he was just sorry for himself; he wouldn't never have wanted to see with his eyes all that dead people; just this. Of course they had to be destroyed, but it was unpleasant to see the scenario in its reality. 

People were killed in a senseless way; also when a life was saved because after all that person didn't annoy too much, later Eichmann thought that he would have killed that X  person years ago because maybe now he/she is alive somewhere and completely free.

There is not, never, in any moment, a sensation that this individual could be called: man. Never. He tried, when captured of telling that being a soldier, he respected the orders given, but, you see, he wasn't a simple soldier; he was the so-called architect of the Holocaust, the responsible one for mass deportation, the creator of that system. No, not a common soldier.

What shocked me the most was that, at the end of a work-day, when lived in Germany and you knew what that work-day meant, just death, Eichmann loved to ask everyday to his autist of stopping the car somewhere before to return home for watching the sunset, because Eichmann thought that sunsets were beautiful, like dawns. Pity that a new dawn and a new sunset meant for wagons of people the end of their existence or a horrible calvary! 

Married, with four children, one born in Argentina, Eichmann had a distorted sexuality, exactly like the rest of his character. The wife has been portrayed like a pale character, a mere executor of the orders of her husband.

This guy is disgusting, deserved the end he did. Josef Mengele after the capture of Eichmann emigrated in another close and friendly country, Paraguay. A body was found close to a river, one day of 1979. The discovery that the John Doe of the situation  was the horrible Nazi of Auschwitz only 6 years later.

No one searched for sure for him.

Cruelty, simply, doesn't pay.

Highly recommended! for not forget, for remembering. Always.

I thank Guanda for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Salzburg City of Culture by Hubert Nowak

 Salzburg City of Culture by Hubert Nowak

is a new book published by Haus Publishing. If you want to immerse yourself in a virtual trip in words there is nothing better than a title of this publishing house. Literature is mixed with culture and trip and the final product is amazing all the times!

That Salzburg is a special city, is a fact. 

Birthplace of Mozart, his genius started to be recognized only decades after his departure at just 37 years; the city appears sometimes a bit distracted, and its metabolism for "digesting" situations and people is not the quickest ones; Salzburg admits the geniality of people with calm, without rush, with that signorility that doesn't want to ruin anything.

Other people not forgotten but for sure not too mentioned are Zweig but also the Trapp family, that became famous thanks to the movie with Julie Christie, The Sound of Music.

The city was completely uninterested to the movie, and snobbed it with great class; and, if tons of people visited Salzburg for trying to find traces of the places visited by the actors while they were filming the movie, Salzburgers remained cold. 

Yes, the Salzburgers are people of culture. For being considered a real Salzburger the family of the person should have spent more than three generations in the city; in case, a person living in Salzburg couldn't never be classified like a "real" citizen. Other people, immigrants, are tolerate, but sure they are also seen as newcomers and not people constituting the most solid tissue of the society of the city.

A city famous for classic but also modern music. There is an incredible story of a musician of asiatic origin that didn't know Mozart. Unthinkable, but also the one of people born in the city and that are composing inspired by the genius of Mozart, technically perfect in every composition and the last big one that classic music has known.

There is a special place where people love to kill themselves although as reports the author, this news tend of not being too mentioned in newsmagazines or magazine. They love to prepare anyway the scenario at the best!

Salzburg is art. There is an artist that created more than 6000 paintings, who also made a painting at Pope Benedict and in general there is an important gallery where it is possible buying great paintings of Klimt and other successful painters of the past.

There is an Hotel the Sacher one, exclusive and just for rich or powerful people. And there, the parade is immense: from American Presidents, passing through Asian celebrities, European politicians, actors, everyone have visited or spent some nights in that hotel or they were people of passage and they "touched" the hotel. 

Salzburg is a Catholic city and once it was a very powerful one. There are many churches in the city and they are still resonating of its glorious past.

At the same time the same name Salzburg is devotely found in the USA and in several part of Europe for remembering the enchanting Austrian City.

The book will drive us in the most popular places of Salzburg where we will meet a lot of pendular musicians but we will also "enter" in the most colorful places: the markets and in particular the one opposite Mirabella square opened every Thursday.

Although just a murder is committed every year in Salzburg, so it's a very friendly and peaceful city, Baumann a new writer established his novels in the city  and the Commissar Merana became a cult. 

Mozart is everywhere in the city; monuments, houses, the fabulous chocolate balls that every tourist will bring home because simply delicious; for sure he is the most important attraction. 

But...How many days people spend to Salzburg when tourists? Sometimes they don't tend to sleep in the city, they are there for some shopping and they return home at the end of the day; sometimes they stay for one or two days. 

Students studying at the Mozarteum have a fulgid international career in most cases. The school is prestigious and love to present to the world real talents from the entire world! although of course just a little numbers of these students will reach the top of the top.

The philosophy of Salzburg can be: "Small is beautiful!"

One of the most relaxing trip in letters in one of my favorite cities where I left a good portion of my heart for the beauty that Salzburg represent!

Highly recommended ALSO if you dream some evasion from the reality.

I thank so much Haus Publishing for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Totie and Flossy Floss Alrqiq, Reema Boufis Illustrated by Anna Lomakinaue

 Totie & Flossy Floss

by Hosam Alrqiq, Reema Boufis Illustrated by Anna Lomakina is the fourth book dedicated to children and their dental hygiene. It is another spectacular children's book. 

In this episode Totie and his friends understand that dental hygiene is not just brushy but also...something else! They don't know it yet, because Totie and his friends are peacefully eating some junk food, and they don't imagine, being in a sleepy mood that strepto and his gang of friends are close to them again tempted to re-launch a new and destructive attack and expedition!  Hungry for calcium and cavities they are just waiting for them! 

Yes, strepto and his friends are trying to "act" differently because Brushy can does the most but not everything: there are parasites so little, so slim in grade to enter between two teeth and then causing problems. Yes, the sad news is that Brushy can't reach all the angles and places of teeth. But the good news is that, suprise there are several remedies! 

How, Totie and his friends think worried they can defeat that horrible guy of Strepto and his nasty friends that want to kill them, their beauty and integrity? Well, there is just something simple that must be done: using Flossy Floss!

The appearance of Flossy Floss is salvific for Totie and her two friends, imprisoned by a wrong and, better written, uncomplete dental hygiene. Sure it is not possible to do maybe for a little kid the complete dental hygiene alone: the help of a parent with flossy floss will be a salvific one and Totie and all his friends will be incredibly thankful because, this time there won't be anymore enemies in the mouth in search for calcium and cavities; the one that we will see is but just a beautiful and healthy mouth!

Beautiful adventure again!

I thank the author of this book for the copy!

Ana Maria Polidori 

Let's Help Shakespeare And Company!

 When Sylvia Beach opened Shakespeare and Company at Rue de l'Odeon, surprise! There was still Spanish Flu, because it was 1919 and the second wave was running in Europe.

Oh, it was so romantic the reality created in Europe by that girl from Princeton called Sylvia Beach.

That bookstore where books could be brought home for an undefined time for being read (it was also a sort of library) meant to the American and British community located for the most diversified reasons in Paris an incredible richness. New talents were discovered and thanks to the kind heart of Sylvia Beach and her devotion for James Joyce, Ulysses, at least was released. At the same time, close and strong was her friendship with Ernest Hemingway, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein  and many other people of letters.

With the arrival also of the Second World War the idea of closing the bookstore was more than real.

If a season was over, in terms of literature and its fertility, during the 1950s George Whitman, a Communist from Boston opened a new bookstore that later became Shakespeare and Company name blessed by the same Sylvia Beach. Whitman was an eccentric person in grade to realize his utopia of living in a socialist corner of the world where knowledge was the only food for the soul and body and where everyone could find what they loved to read. His most suggested book was The Idiot, to him the best masterpiece of all literature.

He opened as first a little bookstore but at the moment Shakespeare and Company is a reality extremely big and diversfied and apparently rich. 

These past days we received a scaring e-mail from Shakespeare and Company because they said they can't continue in this way. Two lockdowns mean to the people, workers, tumbleweeds, owners, the daughter of Whitman, Sylvia

, a

big financial stress and they are asking to everyone for help.

How can you donate to Shakespeare and Company?

Look: the bookstore will be closed, INCLUDING the online bookstore till December 1. They can't accept orders sent via e-mail or phone, only the so-called "Call&Collect" but from people located in Paris.

The bookstore is thankful to everyone who placed an order these past weeks. As soon as possible they will ship orders.

But...How can you help Shakespeare And Company in this phase?

With the new initiative Friends of Shakespeare And Company, a one-year membership created to support the shop financially and spiritually through 2021.

It starts with 45 euros per year and they will ship to you things of the store. Mix of videos, audio, new writings, a video tour created by Sylvia Beach.

Of course you can donate much much more till at 500 euros if you can! And please, do that!

In this case if you will donate before November 15, hurry, hurry! you will also receive an exclusive sketch of your face or one of your beloved one created by Dave Eggers or a hand drawn-doodle by Neil Gaiman!!!

If you can't donate 45 euros for the year, no problem, you can donate less!

Contact at this e-mail: friends@shakespeareandcompany.com and explain how much money you can donate per year.

Impossible to believe that, under the pandemic scaring Spanish Flu, Sylvia Beach opened that little reality at Rue de l'Odeon and now, with Covid-19 Sylvia Beach Whitman should potentially close Shakespeare and Company.

A temptation that shouldn't never be taken in consideration. It can't close. Simply ;-)

Anna Maria Polidori

 

Il figlio Maledetto by Honore de Balzac

 What a book Il Figlio Maledetto L'Enfant Maudit

by Honoré de Balzac published by Marsilio.

Very very sad, but, written with intense poeticity, touches the most profound chords of the soul. 

The story starts when a poor 18 years old girl called Jeanne is constricted, because very rich and alone, her parents both dead, at marrying an aristocratic  old man of 50. 

The family of d'Herouville the one of men of war. Traces of battlefields could be seen also on the face and body of this man. He was a disgusting human being, without any touch of delicacy; he didn't know how to be gentle and close to a girl. He was just a cruel individual. Poor Jeanne, pregnant, starts to enter in labour in the first page of the book.

She knows that the baby is the son of a cousine she loved a lot, Chaverny; a lost love, because of the necessity of marrying this man. Let's add that  because they were relatives the baby was extremely frail for all his existence.

When the husband discovers that she is close to the fatal moment of the arrival of that bastard, he calls a "rebouteur," a man who understood all alone the secrets of medicine and that was in grade of fixing the most important problems in a body of a human or animal. Beauvouloir understood immediately that the situation was embarassing and that for that girl growing up that baby would have meant a lot of sacrifices because in constant peril.

And in fact! The poor kid grew up isolated from the castle, in a little place where her devoted mother visited him, growing up the son as she would have wanted; he transmitte dhim love for songs, literature, culture. The kid and then the teenager had an immense sensibility; he started to recognize when his enemy returned home, sensations transmitted by her mother when very little.

With the time Jeanne had another baby, always a male and this time, the son of d'Herouville. D'Herouville grew up the son, healthy and without problems, instilling in his soul his same values of war and prepotence. That one became the copy of the father.

Substantially in this family there was a favorite for each parent: Jeanne preferred the son she had had with Chaverny because remembered her a best moment of her existence and a different man; the duke preferred his son.

Let's precise that the relationship with Chaverny started before the decision of marrying  

d'Herouville.

Living close to the Ocean to Etienne meant to speak the same language of nature, of that Ocean; calm or cruel it depended by the moments.

The story of Etienne is particular because he can't become anything in that family, treated as if he wouldn't exists.

Story changes when her mother dies, like also his brother, never met by him!!! 

The father, remembering that there was another son, starts to think that nothing is lost, deciding, for opportunity, of giving a chance to this cursed son.

But it is just a story of time.

Beauvouloir would want to donate to the teenager as future bride the daughter he has had when a mature man, Gabrielle.

Gabrille and Etienne fall in love graciously, gradually and with tenderness but when the pale idea of becoming a family starts to become real, the father of Etienne proposes another woman. 

The two won't never accept something like that and he won't hesitate of killing both of them. After all he hadn't never seen that son called by him, cursed, an abort, till the beginning of his existence.

Strong, strong book!

The text of this book is also in french, so if you prefer, you can read it in original.

Highly recommended.

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

 

Piccola Grande Albina Ricordi di una nonna di quasi 90 anni or Albine Petite Paysanne

 I have just known that Albina Gasparri, an ex citizens of our countryside, called Morena is peacefully dead in Saint Maximin, France. 

Several years ago she published a book called Piccola Grande Albina

Ricordi di una nonna di quasi 90 anni or if you prefer in french Albine Petite Paysanne. She told in this book of just 80 pages, or 97 if you read it in french the story of her existence, focusing in particular the attention on her early existence.

Traditions, customs of our countryside were pretty different from the ones experienced by the newest generations. People were very poor, although the family of Albina had everything for a living, shoes included!

There wasn't electricity, there wasn't water at home, there weren't bathrooms; winters were very cold and people could enjoy some warm also by the presence on the first floor of the house by cows and sheep. 

All the evening the ladies of the house spent their time preparing always new clothes, or sheet, or socks, everything that was necessary in a family. Albina was a girl pretty intelligent and in love for clothes, for elegance. She wasn't tall but she loved to wearing always beauty dresses. When she started to earn some money she bought the piece of fabric she loved the most.

Work in the fields was heavy, but she did it with love. Then, it was necessary to go to work to Gubbio as housemaid but she stayed with a family, the one of the mayor of that times that was pretty snob and absolutely not adapted for her; she was treated with great humiliation and when, one day, sat close to her owners, for eating, the old lady said her that being a servant she couldn't eat with them. Treated like a beast, she thought that was arrived the moment of leaving. She did the long walk from Gubbio to Morena with the sensation of setting herself free, and once arrived she hugged her father.

"Oh, please, forgive me, forgive me" he told her.

Albina has always thought that miracles happen. She had a granny she loved a lot and she thinks that she continued to assist her also when pretty adult. 

I know that she is  right. 

The idea of leaving Italy when she was married, arrived several times and France had to be the destination. Pity that the first time there was misunderstanding about the train for Franceand they returned to Morena. 

Years after that first failure, the idea of reaching again Anchise close to Saint Maximin was great and they left. In France they found a best world. The simple fact that Albina could find warm and fresh water at home was priceless, like a miracle. Life bettered much much more when they decided to leaving for the town. Life was going on well. She started to work as tailor, being appreciated. She was doing what she loved in her existence!

Pity that her husband died too soon at just 67, leaving her alone and desperate at first. After some time, she re-started her work as tailor and substantially she has done dresses for weddings till at the age of 80 years and more!

In recent time I met Gioia, one of her relative in a super-market and I asked of Albina. She said me: "Can you believe it? They have a new wedding and she wants to attend it, although there is a pandemic influenza in the world." Albina, Albina I am sure she didn't lose it. 

The last pandemic flu, the Spanish one, touched heavily the existence of Albina's closest relatives.

His grand-dad and the brother died because of Spanish flu like also her father's first wife. 

Albina is the fruit of the second wife of Giuseppe, called Giulia. 

Albina tells a touching anedoct: the first wife, when she understood that the spanish flu would have killed her, asked him of marrying someone else. "Don't stay alone! Remember that we have some children and you must have some company. You must choose someone. Can you think at someone else, apart me?" And Giuseppe mentioned Giulia.

"Go for her. It's the right choice. Let's hope she will tell you that she accepts to marry you."

The family of Albina has always been a functional one. No dramas, just big love between the various members; she was proud of it, admitting that she went proud of the result of her work and the one of her husband and a big and joyous family. 

Albina was also a person extremely secure of herself. She tells everything with great, great sincerity. 

This book is completed with many pictures of her relatives and Morena.

To the entire family our condolences. 

Anna Maria Polidori 

Les Inseparables by Simone De Beauvoir

 Les Inséparable

by Simone de Beauvoir was maybe one of the books more waited this 2020. 

Why this? Because in this book for the first time, Simone de Beauvoir tells her strong friendship with a girl, Zaza, known at school when they were just 9 years old. In the book, fictionalizing the characters, the names are the ones of Sylvie for Simone and Andrée for Zaza.

It's the first book that I read written by Simone de Beauvoir; she wrote wonderfully well, with extreme elegance, let me add this.

The story is pretty intense.

Sylvie knows Andrée when at school.

Andrée was just 9 years old but a girl with strong opinions and affirmations. Maybe it was this one the part of the character that intrigued the most Sylvie. 

Being friends, they shared most of their time together during the years and Sylvie discovers for Andrée a strong and an exclusive friendship and maybe also other feelings. 

She loves Andrée under many ways, because it wouldn't be possible to do differently. 

At the same time Andrée with a sister more old than her, Malou and two twins  lives in a social tissue, the one of her family, populated by a strong and firm catholicism. 

The girl becomes always more dependant by her parents, and she treats them with great respect. 

Once, when she was a teenager, Sylvie was invited at the summer-house of Andrée for staying with her for two weeks. 

Madam Gallard was a strong, egoist person and she loved to keep everyone under control, in particular Andrée.

According to her point of view, her daughter lived a bad influence staying continuously with Sylvie, more opened, more free to do what she loved to do.

She specifies in that occasion that there is someone special in the heart of Andrèe. His name is Bernard and Andrée knew him when she had an incident.

Sylvie understands immediately that the permanence in the summer-house of Andrée won't be a nice walk. Not all the times, although when she arrives at destination she finds many little and big attentions created by Andrée for her in the bedroom; all of it for a warm arrival of her friend.

Andrée explained to Sylvie her relationship with Bernard. Bernard, many hopes were focused on him, left for another country, leaving behind Andrée. A destiny, this one repeated in the time.

The girls are now more adults, they go to the university. Sylvie meets along his way Pascal, the real name of this boy was Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Looking at the picture he appears an unsecure boy, someone not completely clear...

Anyway, Sylvie loves to speak with him of philosophy, religion, destiny, life, death, and soon will introduce his friend to Andrée. Andrée is fascinated by him, intellectually and physically and they start a voracious correspondence. She loves him and Andrée thinks that her feelings are reciprocated. The mother of Andrée is tired to see letters delivered without any sense and ask to the girl what kind of sense these letters have. 

Andrée explains her that she has strong feelings for him.

The mother asks for an official relationship, an engagement and Andrée is more than sure that Pascal will be more than happy of being engaged with her.

But... no: it is the opposite. He is too young, he prefers to wait. 

Why not staying separated?

After all they could resist isolated affectively for two years, the years that Andrée should spend to UK for studying, if not engaged.

Andrée is dilaniated and she speaks of this problems with Sylvie. Or she will engage Pascal or her mother will send her as a package in the UK for studying.

Sylvie understands that to her Pascal is fundamental, and he is the object of the desire of her love. And that Andrée she would want to spend the rest of her existence with him; simply Pascal doesn't want.

A phrase to me emblematic of this girl, Andrée, is this one: Est-ce que je dois passer ma vie a lutter contre le gens que j'aime? 

She understands that she is fighting for building an existence, meeting many resistances, fighting for keeping people sheloves close to her.

Sylvie decides that helping her friend is indispensible. Plus she doesn't want to lose her friend! If she will afford to UK she won't see her for a long time. Two years are a long time when friendship or love are strong.

Pascal doesn't accept the suggestions of Sylvie and more he will adds something that will surely upset Sylvie: "L'intimité des faincailles, ce n'est pas facile a vivre pour des chrétiens. Andrée est une vraie femme, una femme de  chair. Meme si nous ne cédons pas aux tentations, elles nous seront sans cesse présentes: ce genre d'obsession est en soi-meme un péche."

The dialogue becomes impossible; Pascal remains of his opinions and, hurted, Simone goes away.

She reports to Andrée what Pascal said, involving also the sister Emma and the father, regarding his own impossibility of staying with her more seriously, apart the young age of both.

So, Andrée, with great dignity, one day arrives to the house of the father of Pascal for speaking with him about the situation. She doesn't want to meet Pascal, but that father! the one of Pascal, who, according to the point of view of her boyfriend hasn't never warmly suggested to his son an engagement.

The father of Pascal appears surprised by the arrival of Andrée. She doesn't know her, and his son has never mentioned her as best friend or something more.

When she leaves, Andrée will ask to Pascal why he hasn't never hugged her. 

Andrée will fall sick, dying soon.

It's a sad story, this one but a story, real, that marked the existence of Simone de Beauvoir; Simone has never forgotten how special Zza has been to her.

In the middle of the book many documents and pictures and letters.

A precious book of friendship, loss, death, and christian values lived too paroxistically and egoistically.

Highly recommended.

I thank L'Editions de l'Herné for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Totie and the Hungry Sugar Bugs By Hosam Alrqiq, Reema Boufis Illustrated by Anna Lomakina

 Totie and the Hungry Sugar Bugs

By Hosam Alrqiq, Reema Boufis

Illustrated by Anna Lomakina is the second adventure of sunny, tender, friendly, Totie the Molar.

In this second adventure Totie is particularly worried: there are foods not completely good for him and his other teeth friends. Which ones? The most loved ones by children: candies, soda, sugar.

And in fact Totie, ignoring what it is going on and the complot of Strepto&Friends  for damaging his calcium, he is deliciously eating a lollypop!  in ecstatic

way.

Yes because Totie is a gentle, kind, absolutely happy tooth, spreading joy, happiness and the good values of the existence from all his....calcium.

While he is eating peacefully, as we said before and surely all happy, his lollipop, strepto and his gang of friends approached him. Totie sounded a bit worried. 

They said him that he shouldn't speak with strangers. That mates don't appear so reassuring, maybe he thinks, but he is too kind for not being educate with them. 

At the same time Strepto ask for some lollipop.

Totie, extremely generous donate a part of it to Strepto. Immediately after the top of Totie is covered by acid. "Oh, you are real monsters" add a discomforted and ingenuous, tender Totie. They wanted his calcium and they had a part of it, although Brushy, somewhere for a walk notices a discomforted Totie in need of help. Yes: something doesn't seem to be OK.

So, Brushy explains to Totie what happened to him adding that maybe he shouldn't eat sweet things everytime. And that a correct dental hygiene can defeat forever that horrible Strepto and his friends! 

Beautiful book! Children will adore it!

Educative with a wonderful touch and the most friendly approach you can imagine.

Highly recommended.

I thank the author for the copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Return to the Most Beautiful Village in the World by Yutaka Kobayashi

 Return to the Most

Beautiful Village in the World by Yutaka Kobayashi is a new delicate, tender children's book published by Museyon.

Since he left his small village, Paghman, located in Afghanistan, Mirado with the circus where he worked in, visited many places, met wagons of people learning a lot. Sure, he was still missing his little village in Afghanistan where there were all the people he left behind but that he loved so badly. Plus the flute of his father started to become always more consumed.

The decision of returning home was saluted by the people of the circus with a big feast and celebration. The following days were particularly strong for Mirado. He walked and walked and walked meeting along the way generous, kind people in grade of helping him, giving good advices, or food, warm and some beverages.

Once arrived in the village, he searched immediately for known, friendly faces, recognizing at the same time, smells, colors of the town. But, look: no one he knew was around! 

He started to sing an air with the new flute presented by a man and a woman he had met along the way. Many people, curious, watched this fabulous player, while his friend Yamo recognized immediately his friend! He was so happy to see him again! re-starting to walk along the life's path with him.

Beautiful, enchanting! Main thematic are familiar values, friendship, trip, the one symbolical of life, and the more practical, physical one; the return home means a vital part of our being.

Highly recommended to your children!

I thank Museyon for the copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

 

Our days are Like Full Years A Memoir with Letters From Louis Khan by Harriet Pattison

 Our days are Like Full

Years A Memoir with Letters From Louis Khan by Harriet Pattison is a moving, big book released by Yale Press. 

First of all this one is a love-story. Harriet studied at the Yale Drama section of the university in 1953, when, one day this architect, a teacher of Yale, Louis Khan, 27 years more old than her, joined the students chatting for some time with them. Harriet remained impressed by his eyes. 

Years later she met him again and this one they started a clandestine relationship. 

The family at some point was worried because they didn't see Harriet still settled down. Later Harriet would have told to his relatives what was going on.

Everyone agreed that this one couldn't be the best choice for a girl: having a relationship with a married man was a danger for the future. 

Louis, called by Harriet Lou, was a busy architect and worked substantially in the entire world. Once he was contacted also by Jacqueline Kennedy; after the tragical departure of John Kennedy in Dallas, Jacqueline thought that it was necessary to build a place for keeping alive the memory of her beloved husband.

Later the commission was assigned at someone else, remarks Harriet.

Being Lou a married man, of course this relationship had all the tastes of a story lived  in its partiality. 

Most times as it happen in these cases, Harriet insisted with Lou for living an existence together; sometimes Lou promised; other ones he was firm: no. When Harriet discovered she was pregnant, her family, terrorized, insisted with Khan and also with the wife of Khan: they had to divorce. But no, Louis, neither his wife, agreed.

Harriet escaped away when still the pregnancy not visible: hiding the pregnancy was the best way for avoiding questions of this "unusual" birth and saving her reputation.

Lou worked a lot, visiting many places, and every time wrote to Harriet intense love-letters with drawings, sketches of palaces, places. Creative letters and postcards where he detailed everyday with meticulousness, telling to Harriet his fantastic existence spent in the various continents. These letters, these postcards have been a lot for Harriet. She spent long periods all alone, without to seeing Lou and these letters were a great comfort for her, and, Nathaniel apart, the strongest signal of his passage in her existence.

One day, when in her 90s, Harriet reopened the chinese cinnabar box rediscovering the correspondence sent by Lou. Her past existence reappeared like for magic: "I found him in every phrase," added and for once, she decided of keeping opened the chinese cinnabar box, sharing with the rest of the world her existence; precisely, her 15 years with Lou.

The end of Louis Khan has been incredibly sad: he suffered of cardiac problems and one day  collapsed in the men's room in Penn Station but not having written any home address, for privacy I guess, they searched for him in office, thinking that that one could be his house.

Not finding anyone, Louis was treated as a missing person and for two days his body remained unclaimed. 

Harriet and Nathaniel wants to keep alive the legacy left by Louis Khan, a man, an architect and... a man of words!

Highly recommended.

I thank Yale University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori