The Cloven Book One written by Garth Stein Drawn by Matthew Southworth

 The Cloven

Book One written by Garth Stein Drawn by Matthew Southworth is a graphic novel absolutely interesting and touched me profoundly. There is a sophisticated and obscure, at the same time, atmosphere; you won't find sun, light or illustrations set in a sunny day, no: the story remarks the sufferences of clovens, so the various sets, for a reason or another are in the obscurity; an obscurity where creatures re-born, re-discover freedom or simply... Are born for then being imprisoned and treated for experiments; clovens grow up in the sufferance because their existence is planned for horrible purposes; they live in cages, in captivity, substantially; horrible scientists plan the destiny of these humans-goats: I loved the stunning, very strong colors of the illustrator that will underline the story, and the main character looklikes a manga.

 

The story starts pretty sadly: in a laboratory a baby is born: but this baby is the fruit of an experiment: he is half human and half...goat. The Cloven is apparently normal and human like us, if you look at him, but there are many differences. 

What scared me to death were the evil doctors and people who manipulated them from the beginning to the end in the most heartless way.They consider these humans manipulated in a laboratory simple instruments for reaching their golas, for only later understand that they have feelings, they are social and they should grow up in a family, surrounded by love.

A cloven don't know what means freedom, but he learns the messages of the outside world once set free pretty rapidly, exactly as a goat would do; with efficiency for his own existence.

Grown by heartless people, only interested in experimenting on them this and that, once the first one will be set free will discover at first a lot of squalor around him, not too much different from the world  left behind, finding some peace only in a homeless spot of the city.

Another thematic treated in the graphic novel is also the heavy condition of homeless in the city of Seattle but also how diversity, so being a cloven in this case, can be an opportunity.

Why these people continued to create all these clovens and what kind of destiny do they have?

It wouldn't be a great destiny, most of them wouldn't live enough, plus their creation hasn't been done for the purposes officially known...So, once, someone decides of setting them free.

Although these creatures are skepticals when they meet new friends, the message that the writer spreads is this one: you must be here, with us, this one is the best place for you.

Beautiful, tender, human work, highly recommended.

I thank Garth Stein for the physical copy of this graphic novel.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Thanks for the book Garth Stein!

 Hoooray! The package with the latest book by Garth Stein this time arrived safely.

It's a story that must be told. A lot of time ago, when I read that Garth Stein was publishing a completely different book,a  graphic novel, I asked for a review copy directly to him.

I love Garth Stein's books. I read all of them. I discovered Garth thanks to the book Raven Stole the Moon. Corvò Rubò la Luna. I found it at the supermarket remaining simply bewitched by it. 

The story in Raven stole the Moon the one of the departure of the beloved son of a couple and the trip, intimate, magical of his mother passing through old Native American legends whispering of otters...

Months after that conversation, Garth didn't tell me anything in the while, I received a message: the book is returned to the USA after a lot of months that I had sent it.

My joy was that Garth has sent the book, the sadness at the same time, that the package returned to the USA. 

No one told me that there was a book waiting for me, so I changed the address of destination: directly in Gubbio, where, I was sure that the packge would have arrived.

And hoooray! today after months reached the proper destination.

I thank you a lot Garth. My new reading! Great for the summer-time.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Forse tu Sola hai Compreso" Lettere di Eleonora Duse a Emma Lodomez Garzes edited by Marianna Zannoni

 "Forse tu Sola hai Compreso"

Lettere di Eleonora Duse a Emma Lodomez Garzes edited by Marianna Zannoni is a new book by Marsilio introducing us a character that has been legendary, remarkable and known in the entire world. This time Eleonora Duse is seeing and "read" through the perspective of correspondence. 

At that time, the end of the XIX and the advent of the XX century this one was an activity prevalent in a daily base in the existence of the so-called elite. 

as also many other people had a lot of correspondents everywhere; in this book the attention is focused on that female correspondents who made the difference: and in particular in the character of Emma Lodomez Garzes. A friendship this one long 40 years and that permit us of understand much better feelings, emotions, and the same existence of Eleonora Duse. 

The two will become very good friends when the husband of Emma killed himself. After that sad episode the two will start a long correspondence. Eleonora sounded at first happy for what he was doing, but later she will also report to her friend her love for D'Annunzio with which she cooperated at long; a love-story lived with intensity. When ended, it left Eleonora destroyed, devastated for the pain, and the phrase, "Forse tu Sola hai Compreso" maybe just you understood my feelings, was referred at the sadness she proved.

The beginning of the first world war meant to her a profound sadness because she couldn't reach her relatives in UK, revealing us the feelings for our soldiers. "We have empty words, while they fight for us." She will return to work, after the first world conflict with a renewal enthusiasm. The last letter sent to Emma the year before his departure in the United States in april 21 1924, in a tournee with the show La Porta Chiusa. The news meant also for American people, and the rest of the world a big shock.

You find also postcards, pictures inserted in a special chapters and then enjoy, really enjoy this correspondence.

Yes let me add that thus one is not maybe the best correspondence that you can read if you search fur profundity, big thoughts. Eleonora is not Colette, Sylvia Beach or Stead. Eleonora didn't tend to write long letters and she had an original writing-style as you will see: she didn't love to writing about abstract topics; she was a lady pretty concreet, and sometimes I can't tell to you, my reader, that these ones are proper letters; some of them are telegraphic notes, quick, because cards sent for announcing her arrival in the city for example or for other reasons; other ones are pretty short ones. 

It's anyway an interesting correspondence because let us know much better this immense past character with more attention.

Highly recommended book, fascinating cover.

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Un Ettaro di Cielo e 39 di Terreno Storia d'Impresa di Franco Cristaldi by Barbara Corsi

 In this  book Un Ettaro di Cielo e 39 di Terreno

Storia d'Impresa di Franco Cristaldi by Barbara Corsi, the detailed history of the creation of the italian major signed by the beloved italian producer daoppeared abruptly in 1992.

Who is a producer if not someone visionary, with a dream, someone particularly involved in technical and bureocratic aspects: someone in connection with banks and influenctial men in grade of helping him in the realization of his projects?

 A man of left, Cristaldi was close friends with the family Marzotto who will be helpful in the material creation of Vides: at the same time Cristaldi will support the family with several spots and documentaries.

When Cristaldi will move from Turin to Rome, the Vides became Vides-SPA-Produzione Cinematografica and was located in Piazza Pitagora . From 1957 to 1959 there are nine movies produced by Vides and all of them with great directors and actors; Mario Monicelli, Steno, Vittorio Gassman, Luchino Visconti, Denys de la Patelliére.

Cinecittà is interested in co-productions with Vides but contrasts will born soon after the release of I Soligi Ignoti, mythical movie with Totò for a story of money.

Cristaldi won't never involve anymore Cinecittà in his projects, creating a new movie production center.

With the time and thanks to his new reality, the entrance in scene of new actresses is wanted by everyone: Rosanna Schiaffino, Claudia Cardinale the first ones: they also felt of lot of competition! It is interesting the modality used by Cristaldi for lauching a new actress. We are in an historical moment in which the so-called divism began to be pretty delevoped.

Nuovo Cinema Paradiso has been produced by Cristaldi and it was interesting to read what happened in the script-phase in which everyone wanted to say the last word. At the end the movie was pretty long: 185 minutes, was reduced at 135 minutes. At the box office it was not a success but Cannes believed in this project: they wanted to have Tornatore at the festival. We know the rest of the story. 

Cristaldi believed in this movie and what he did was the creation of a bridge with the various authors and director for seeing the movie at its best. Cristald had clear ideas, and no one maybe would have been in grade of let him change idea, but at the same time he wanted to listen also the point of view of the people involved in the creation of the movie. 

For, of course, obtaining the best.

A beautiful portrait of a man in love for cinema!

Highly recommended

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori  

.

L'Elégant by Barthelemy Desplats

 L'Elégant by Barthelemy

Desplats is a new novel, and the first book by this more than promising author. It's the perfect for this summer-time! It is published by Grasset. 

Let's start from the title. 

Why L'Elegant? 

The father of Antoine, the protagonist of this story was called l'Elégant because of his pullovers of cashmere, his beloved cigars and whiskeys, his love for golf and the luxury life he enjoyed. He had a great business in Congo and became incredibly rich: unfortunately internal wars and disorder drastically reduced the activity of Antoine's father. He returned home with the entire family but never loved, completely loved the existence spent in France, although, of course, it wasn't a miserable one.

This holiday with Antoine, his son is a habit: every year they spend some time together but this last holiday will be the most precious one , the most important one of their existence. Substantially they leave Biarritz for later affording in Spain and Portugal. And, the trip will present to them buried memories of Antoine and his conflictual relationship with his father. It is not just a physical trip the one attended by the two family-members: it is a trip in the memories, force ample, for Antoine. He will clarify the suffering aspects of his relationship directly with his father opening his heart.

A father, remembers Antoine not there for him when he needed him, when little, and once he divorced from his mother, more absent as well. A father who preferred his brother to him; or a substance, alcohol for forgetting his failures. Sometimes Antoine's friends were surprised that this one was his father.  Antoine returns with his memory to the holidays spent with his brother and sister, the swimming pool where they loved to spend a lot of time.

The story is spent mainly in restaurants, locations of these two exotic countries, describing stunning scenarios, delicious food, yum! and various kind of wine and other typical beverages. People met along the way are weird, or interesting as fir example the merchant of drug...

In the while, if his father is in love for golf, at the moment has a companion more young than him of 20 years who works at the Nissan, that's why he is driving a Nissan Micra, Antoine enjoys surf. 

The father of Antoine enjoys to seeing his son having some fun although Antoine understands soon that his father, no, this time is not OK. 

There is a moment in our existence where what remains of our dear ones are memories, souvenirs, beauty moments spent all together and remembered with joy.

It's a trip this one made of confessions, open dialogues, human fragilities, that put us in confrontation with the existence, the end of it, and the perennial show that must goes on thanks to the extensions left by parents, represented by children.

Highly recommended. 

I thank Grasset for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

 

Un amour retrouvé by Veronique de Bure

 Un amour retrouvé

by Veronique de Bure is a new book published by Flammarion.

Enchantingly profound and psychologically involving, the narrator of this story is Véronique the daughter of this lady and mother of 63 years, who, remained widow, at first refuses any kind of other serious involvements. No other men, no a dog, sometimes a serious occupation exactly as the one of a man can be, told one day to her daughter, smiling. 

Véronique is tremendously affectionated at her mother, although at the same time she is missing her father so badly. 

She misses him and the daily existence they experienced together: the philosophy of living of his father was beautiful: he was a colloquial guy, generous, opened with the various guests, friends, people who loved to spending time in their company. Beautiful memories.

One day her mother receives a letter: it's a letter from her first love! A love lost something like 50 years before. His name is Xavier and for a reason or another this love remained in a favolistic condition: that love-stories that a person can just imagine in their possible evolution without having never lived them in the reality because something interrupted the natural course of the story. 

In this case, the lady is tempted, oh truly tempted, and writes back to Xavier. It's, at first, just a correspondence, felt and waited, between the two. Then there is a first invitation to the house of Xavier, who lives in a part more warm of France. 

The mother of Véronique is excited after her little vacation; the story becomes to be more serious and this news (made by confidences,support, that involved at first only Véronique) must be shared, communicated also to the rest of the family. 

Véronique is grown up as a lonely child because her brothers are much more old than her. Anyway, the news is lived well by the rest of the family. Also the numerous family of Xavier lives the entrance of Véronique's mother with joy and happiness. A presence for the father is important.

Véronique doesn't imagine at first that the involvement would have been complete and total; she just imagined the platonic love-story of two people in the last and important phase of their existence. The mother is always more taken by Xavier and although Véronique is affectionated to her, she understands with terror that maybe...Maybe she is more happy with Xavier than not with her father; with that first love than not with the second one with which she built a family with... No: possible... She feels a profound irritation mounting in her soul because her father was simply...unique.

Times passes by and there are several misunderstandings on the way; a blessing not understood; but I am sure that what Véronique is realistically missing is her exclusive relationship with the mother: a mother with which she shared her feelings and thought while drinking a cup of tea eating biscuits and where there weren't barriers, walls, built only with the entrance in scene of Xavier.

Now her mother is more focused on her own existence, sharing time in the house where she lived with her husband, with Xavier: Véronique noticed that her mother is de fact building a new existence with Xavier, made of little new habits, before absolutely unexistents; Véronique sees with sadness objects, clothes, unknown, property of a stranger: someone who is not her father: what a sadness... in that house Véronique had only seen his father's dresses, his dad's items. No: it musn't be simple. Véronique's mother is missed by her friends and locals: sure a partner brings more energies and a tranformation of the existence, and the mother of Véronique can only does it. Plus: conversations with Xavier if at first relaxing becomes plenty of intellectuals walls for not offending him and his ideas, thinks Veronique.

The reader will follow till the end of the existences of Xavier and Véronique's mother. An evolution that sometimes will be sad, will hurt Véronique, will please her, will let her think controvertially at a character like the one of Xavier: Véronique will continue to miss her father and will continue of thinking at the dear old times: an evolution that will mean new children but also a differentiation of her existence without anymore her mother close to her.

When I received this book I thought that it would have been a quick reading, but I can tell you that it was not. It must be read with calm, digesting every phase, every page, every instant experienced by the protagonist; death and life dances together, considering the ages of the protagonists, and this love musn't be intended like a frivolous one but the last one of the existence of these two human beings; the last one that was, 50 years before, the first.

Feelings are filtered magistrally well and let thinks a lot the reader on the role, and presence of a mother in the existence of children of every age and what a serious alteration like the entrance in scene of a new man means with the time, seeing it through the mirror of the feelings of Véronique.

I want to continue to read Véronique's books, because she is touching. If you haven't done it, you should immediately go to the closest bookstore for buying a copy of this book and thinking sat in a café...Just thinking at the meaning of the existences.

Highly recommended.

I thank Flammarion for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

The Death of Vazir Mukhtar by Yury Tynyanov Translated by Anna Kurkina Rush & Christopher Rush

 That the existence of Alexander Griboedov has been complicated, he was a writer but also a diplomat and lost in a horrible way his existence, it is known. Author of Woe from Wit, please see also that review I wrote time ago, Griboedov has been the inspiration of this complex book The Death of Vazir Mukhtar

by Yury Tynyanov Translated by Anna Kurkina Rush& Christopher Rush. 

Written more than a century ago, Russia had lived many important changes in the while. The tzar Romanov and his entire family were brutally murdered and a new political party, the communist one started to take place. At the same time the author of this book lived these political changes as if they wouldn't never have touched him immersed as he was in past history: in his existence Tynyanov alienated himself from the current events of his poor country researching and letting live again the society that existed once and that, terribly, oh, so terribly, fascinated him.

Tynyanov was a Jewish student who, once arrived at St Peterburg fell in love for history and biography. Tynyanov was in particular in love wit some characters of the past ending up to writing three novels where portrayed the biographies of the people he estimated the most.

One of them was Griboedov.     In this book the latest events that would have brought the diplomat in Asia where he was brutally killed.

But...Who was Griboedov? A fascinating mind, let's start to say this.

He was, yes a diplomat, but he was also born for writing and what he left behind were important sunny writings: being poor, although of noble origins, he had to work for a living.He fought in the imperial armed forces againt Napoleon. After the war became a translator, knowing many languages, for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The diplomatic career would have reached him pretty soon being a beautiful mind. Big traveller, there are many writings, from letters to journals kept by him but not yet put in order, where he wrote his impressions of places, people, food, new lands that he visited.

You will read a remarkable reconstruction of the events and the person of Griboedov  simply because in his modernism what did Tynyanov was inventing the genre of biography never tried before in this shape.

Tynyanov's research didn't want to fictionalize the existence of Griboedov, but wanted ro reconstruct essentials and real facts occurred to the unlucky diplomat.

It is a wonderful book this one and will keep you a very good company during this summer-time transporting you in exotic places, but also letting you show old manners, old-fashioned existences, being also a good portrait of the Russia of two centuries ago.

Highly recommended.

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

 

La Figlia del Reich by Louise Fein

 A magistral book La Figlia del Reich

by Louise Fein published in Italy by Marsilio.

What a love-story. I can tell you that you'll be completely captured by an engaging narration very well built so that it will be impossible to put this book down.

I went to bed last night with the idea of ending it today but then in the middle of the night I got up for finishing the story. I was too curious!

We are in the city of Lipsia, in Germany and precisely in one of the most beautiful classy mansions of the city; a mansion of a Jewish family but where now live the cheerful nazi family of Hetty; composed by his father mr Heinrich, her mother, her beloved brother Karl, Bertha the cook and Ingrid the housemaid; Hetty is the narrator of this tender, strong and touching story.

When little she was saved by a gentle boy, friend of her brother Karl, because she wasn't able of swimming. Walter Keller is a big companion of Karl and Hetty. Hetty and Karl have a house built in a tree and they love to spend time all together there, playing. Till at the moment in which the racial laws against Jewish people become more hard and Karl decides of breaking the friendship with Walter.

Hetty grows up adoring Hitler considering that his father was an important member of the party. To her Hitler was a God; someone everyone should love for his big qualities and because he wants the best for all its citizens. He fights against Jewish because Jewish want to conquer the world: common people repeat this mantra starting to hate Jewish citizens. People, the Jewish ones of Lipsia who had lived peacefully and completely integrated with the rest of the citizens, Germans more than a German could be, loving and serving their country, exactly as it happend for the French or the Italian Jewish ones. More than a reflection must be done...

When Hetty discovers that Walter is a Jewish, she can't understand. 

I found the character of Hetty pretty weird, and sometimes egoistical.

I could not understand her all the times: plus, in a way or another no one of the people who helped her, have had great fortune. You will discover it in the novel. 

Sure, let's add this, for trying to give back a good idea of the protagonist: she is confused by a nazis family and the love for Walter, a thinker, someone who opened her eyes: it's impossible in these times of peace that we are breathing, thank Lord, to understand what means living in a state of dictatorship and in particular in the nazis one where a suspect could kill a person. Everyone apparently agreed with the ideas expressed by the dictator, because they couldn't do differently; people would have been killed if discovered of opposed ideas, and no one wanted to lose the skin, for, after all the deficiency or craziness of their leader.

But not everyone supported Hitler and the reality where Hetty lives is not linear but pretty contorted.

His father, his brother, his friends, they are all liars in a way or another: sometimes Hetty won't understand anymore who she can trust anymore.

The irony of all this tale is that after that the dictatorship of Hitler was over, another brutal one, the Communist dictatorship dominated the part of Germany, the East one, where Hetty continued to live, so Hetty breathed what means freedom only after 1989. An entire existence kept prisoner by dictatorships, mamma mia! with freedoms strongly reduced, in particular the possibility of expressing opinions. The positive thing of the Communism party  was that it has always given the possibility of studying to its citizens, and so she became who she would have wanted to become when young. 

I loved the characters of Bertha, Walter and the one of her friend Erna. The first one, the cook of the family was a gentle woman, Walter is an opened boy, tender, delicate, beauty inside and outside, Erna will be loyal till the end. I hated the characters  of Tomas and Ingrid, because they represent the biggest squalor of the existence.

Highly recommended.

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of La Figlia del Reich.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Dispatches from Chengdu Abdiel Leroy

 Abdiel Leroy taught  years ago in China, and precisely at the Chengdu University Of Technology..

In his latest ebook Dispatches

from Chengdu tells to the readers his chinese adventure starting with the names of his students, for practicity transformed in english ones and inspired by Leroy's passion for Shakespeare. 

He had his own apartment and the decription sounded very good. 

For encouraging his students Leroy organized moments where he shared some prizes for a reason or another; they could be books of Oscar Wilde or differently postcards.

Although China is a communist state, education of children is not free, and to Abdiel this fact was a sort of shock considering that in UK there is free education when students are little, and no, Uk is not a communist country.

There were problems when some students complained that it was too difficult to memorize words in english.

Students can't access to printers so Leroy prepared to his students a lot and a lot of material for studying.

The most ironic fact was that a girl was introduced to him: she should have received her graduation in english, but she didn't understand a word of what said Leroy and the conversation was impossible. Why is like that? Asked Leroy frustrated.

Moments of tentions appeared also when he tried to involved chinese students in theatrical moments and they complained with the people of the university, while another time a student said him that, simply, she didn't like poetry, and neither literature. The question of Leroys was why she attended courses she didn't like at all for 6 years.

This book is plenty of these anedocts, and moments of existence with these students.

It's a brief reading, just 100 pages, but intriguing and interesting if you want to discover more chinese culture and the problematics that a western citizen can meet living there.

Highly recommended.

I thank Abdiel Leroy for the copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori  

La Folie Pastre La Comtesse, la musique et la guerre by Olivier Bellamy

 La Folie Pastre

La Comtesse, la musique et la guerre by Olivier Bellamy is a new interesting book released by Grasset.

She was an eccentric lady, in love for music, theater, culture, creative people and in perennial research of an idealistic world where just beauty, music, theather, life and happiness had to go on. She was la Folie Pastré. A part of her  epitaph in fact: "Tout sa vie ne fu q'un scandale...C'est fou!..."

Lily Pastrè was this one and much more. Born in a rich family in the city of Marseille, she studied piano and violin with great passion. That music and creativity would have been a big and essential part of her existence it was visible also when pretty young; anti-conformist, she loved to be free and to stay free; she didn't never become a composer; Lily loved, viscerally loved art and the entire creative world but more as a privileged spectator. When she lost at war her beloved brother Lily found a good refugee only in music. She lived thar experience in fact in all its powerful devastation and sadness.

Although a free spirit, she married Jean Pastré, a rich member of a family famous for being merchants, bankers in love for good wine as well.

She has had three children but Lily has never manifested maternal spirit and she didn't falsify this part of her character. She was who she was in the good and in the bad.

Once, betrayed by her beloved Jean Pastré, she lived a profound crisis: how could she sort out that moments in which every possible thoughts decended upon her?

Once in Paris she assisted at a show and she remembered: her love for art, music. But...Where to go for a re-birth?

The beloved villa Provencale de Montredon where she had spent many happy moments.

In this place, a dreaming house, beautiful, suggestive, (she is closed to the public but opened to the artists) during the last second world war she loved to give hospitality at a molteplicty of talents: they were the most known ones:  her role was not just the one of having close to her good creatives: she also helped many talented Jewish men and women, giving to them a refugee, a place where to staying, as in the case of Clara the pianist, just for an example. She met along her way mr Fry, an American who denounced the conditions lived by many Jewish in Europe; this man became an activist and helped a lot of famous Jewish preparing to them false documents and saving their existences. The USA didn't maybe understand a lot what mr Fry did, because once returned in his country, he was a member of the FBI, he was fired and continued to live giving lessons to some students.

Lily ate and smoked a lot, she went to bed at the most eccentric hours,  but her friends to her made the difference and meant living like suspended in a time where there was only a beautiful world. 

This Villa was so dreaming that like in a fairy-tale, nothing or no one could break that beautiful dream. So, in a year like the 1942 Lily organized in gran stile a big  show: Le Songe d'une nuit d'été by Shakespeare. She would have wanted to try with an italian comedy but to her Shakespeare had an intensity more close to the one she was searching for her show at that time.

It was a big success and curiosity: a viewer was also a Nazis.

No sure why, while I was reading the biography of Lily I thought that under many ways, for sure distantly, she had some traits of Marie Antoinette and Peggy Guggenheim. Why? Because all of them lived the desire of an escapism: an escapism in a different utopistic land at the constant research of a beautiful world, that passeed through art, through theater, music, beautiful houses, trying to avoid constantly sufferance, and giving where possible joy and happiness to everyone.

She was a savior, Lily, because thanks to her being there, many artists, from Jewish origins saved their existence. Brava!

A beautiful book by Grasset, highly recommended.

I thank Editions Grasset for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Il Lato Positivo della Vita by Hada Keisuke

 Il Lato Positivo della Vita

by Hada Keisuke published by Atmosphere Libri bring us to Japan, and in particular in Tokyo, defining a society and its main problem: the old age of the citizens.

This story is little because it represents a microcosm but it tell us a lot on the condition of having a father, or grand father at home for several years in particular when this man is not anymore completely auto-sufficient.

In particular, what touched me the most was Kento, the principal character of this book, 28 years, unemployed, fixated with old age and for this reasons trying to prove to himself thanks to gym that he is still young and completely OK.

At first I hated the character of Kento, I confess: he didn't understand his grand-father and he was distant with him. He hasn't never searched of asking more to him, establishing a good conversation or going deep; just for trying to understand who his old relative was; plus! at a certain point, he will also try to plan a good death for his grand father: can you imagine it?

It is a Japanese legend this one; the good death. People who reached 70 years decided to go in a very remote place, deciding to dying for starvation. All of it, for keeping the community and population healthy and productive.

Kento thinks at the best way for realize this dream: the good death of his grand-dad.

How to do that? One of his friends working in a Home tells  him some trics (sic!) for debilitating much more the health of the elderly.

So Kento starts to help his grand-father just because he thinks that his death will be near.

The effect produced is completely different, as you will see!

I also think that the family of Kento was a horrible one, with the daughter continously insulting that poor old man that, once, had been exactly of the same age of his daughter and the same one of his nephew.

Kento, after all, is not a bad soul; the opposite: to my point of view if his  grand-father would have dead he would have lived a horrible existence, thinking that under many ways he was the responsible one.

Destiny helps Kento; when he goes away because he finds a job, he will meet close to him an old man feeling a lot of melancholy for his grand-father and hoping to find him still alive when he would have returned home.

There is in this short book, that you'll read it in a couple of hours or so, it is just 100 pages, a big thematic: the youthness lived in a country of old people, something that I have also experienced in Italy, the second country more old in the world after Japan: it's not simple coping with illnesses and death; and seeing death too early; and so the obsession, fear of becoming old not anymore auto-sufficient are feelings of these kind of old societies; all feelings these ones not proved  in any way in a country plenty of young people. 

The book treats also, and it is very interesting, the situation lived by young people in confrontation with the old generations and the weight that they carry. A country where the pensionistic phantom is not utopic, will give a much more frustrating future to the youngest generations.

Highly recommended reading!

I thank Atmosphere Libri for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Trio by Dacia Maraini

 Trio

by Dacia Maraini is a quick reading. It reports the correspondence between two friends who shares the same man: Agata is the wife of Girolamo; Annuzza the lover. Grown up as big friends, and having shared beautiful moments together, after all the two of them don't mind. I mean: for sure Agata is not happy of this relationship of her husband, but happy that the betrayal is with Annuzza, someone she respects a lot, and vice versa.

We are in Sicily, Messina and the year is the one of the terrible plague started in may 1743: it killed half the population of the city and was accidentally brought by a little ship with wagons of beautiful textiles from Greece. 

At the arrival, the guards asked for the numbers of the members on board: they had to be 12, but after all they were just 11. 

Why? The reason? the guards asked.

The captain of the ship told to the guards that the sailor died because of a heart attack. 

For several reasons, the guards decided of putting all the crew under quarantine: a quarantine is called in this way because people hadn't to leave the ship for 40 days. But it happened that after two days also the captain fell sick and died, like other members of the crew: it was PLAGUE! And the plague escaped from the ship for entering in the city: maybe also the guards fell sick while they were controlling the ship; who can knows?

For sure of great help for the expansion of the pestilence were rats, via fleas: it became a devastation.

Who could escape away from the city, did it, as in the case of these two ladies. Story repeats itself: rich people, or people with two houses also in this historical moment prefer to escape away from the city, searching for the help of a tranquil countryside, where they can be sure that the contagion is less less virulent and not expected massively as in the city.

The correspondence between the two ladies is beautiful, plenty of good touch of culture, sharing informations, daily life, difficulties in finding food, guests arrived at home, and then fell sick, with the chronicle of a pestilence that will leave the two ladies skeptical, continuing to procrastinate their return in the city with their respective families.

At that time plague yes, was a known calamity, but it wasn't still defined the main vehicle of transmission: there were many suppositions; plague is transmitted thanks to a bacteria, and certain areas of the world have still cases of bubbonic plague: I discovered that there are certain plagues in grade of killing in one day an individual, and that, although this one is an illness known from centuries, no one has discovered a real treatment, although it responds well at the use of tetraciclines. I found the main thematic of this book weird. These women were very modern for sharing a man without difficulties: anyway this correspondence is a good portrait of the old and remote Sicily.

Beautiful.

Highly recommended.

Anna Maria Polidori 

To Be and Live The reasons You are Here! A 90 Days Journal by Jacqueline Pirtle

 What is life if not an experience you must love? For doing this we must BE and LIVE the existence at the fullest.

In this last journal by Jacqueline Pirtle To Be and Live

The reasons You are Here! A 90 Days Journal it is taking in consideration Being and Living.

To BE, writes Jacqueline means "existing as your whole being, mind soul, and your consciousness; with live HOW you are experiencing your physical life."

What you'll learn using day-by-day this 90-DAYS journal? Using it you will start to re-consider your natural power, your abilities, your sensibilities, your desires and wishes, so that you can start to love your life again, because your real BE will become always more strong and powerful.

Life means also priorities and what truly matters; sometimes we are lost, we don't remember what we loved and why, or what we appreciated the most, because too involved in a frenetic existence; it's time to re-start to BE your original  BEING, with priorities, and the life you have always dreamed.

I have chosen these two entries, pretty powerful. And let's play. In the first one Jacqueline asks what you deserve. 

My list as a deserver:

A beautiful smile!, a beautiful life, working being paid, dignity, honest friends, happiness, serenity, honesty, being treated wih respect, sincerity, travelling, experiencing, living, being free, independent.

The other question I picked up is this one: 

How does a best week, best month, best year, and best life look like?

My answer is this one: no departures, satisfactions at home and work, joys, happiness, friends, writings, readings, cinema, nature, calm, serenity, definitely the end of the pandemic! when it will be! 

Give trust to Jacqueline Pirtle. She is the best!

Highly recommended.

L'Amour des choses invisibles by Zied Bakir

 L'Amour des choses invisibles

by Zied Bakir is one of my best readings of this 2021.

Written  with great erudition and complexity, spanning from religion to daily life anedocts, intriguing characters and interesting facts, this story starts (the first pages  focus in the current events, but the reader will be soon transported in the past events that caused the imprisonment of the guy)  when the main character, an unregular immigrant but intelligent and with a great erudition  visits  the Cathedral of Notre-Dame for discovering there a girl, Pomme, in contemplation close to a statue that to her, for obvious reasons that you will read, means a lot.

After a visit in the bookshop Shakespeare and Company, where they are attracted by an englidsh edition of Le Petit Prince, Pomme asks him, although he is muslin, if he wants to attend with her the pilgrimage to Compostelle. I didn't have any clue that this pilgrimage is so articulated and that leave at the end also a certification that it has been attended. A pleasant surprise.

In the while, doing this, they meet along their way extraordinary people: brief meetings for necessity that anyway touch their hearts.

Once returned home, the idea of going to the Mecca, the islamic most known mosque is great. After all he is 33 years, he should do that. 

He decides to leaving Paris for good, expulsed for his own desire.

I loved the funny dialogue with the police woman: he invented a story of a lonely arrival in Lampedusa; completely false.

Once in Libia he will discover that the song is not as nice as he thought  and that this new pilgrimage with a civil war going on can't be after all so successful. And in fact he will be put in jail. No one believes that he is a pilgrim. Everyone think that he is a spy. During a war aren't there a lot of spies?

He will continue to hear from Pomme and the idea, matured, after that weeks of seclusions is to return to Paris. And this time for good and forever. He discovers to be in love for that  city; and that he wants to spend the rest of his time in the french capital.

Once in prison  he will meet particular friends, one of them with the story of a diagnoys of death and the following  idea of leaving his town for seeing the world, attending a beautiful departure (I won't tell you more for not spoling too much) another one is a criminal specialized in the art of stealing cars: our hero will also see the first dead man, a condition never seen before and pretty disturbing.

I absolutely fell in love for the imam of the mosque dedicated to Rimbaud. What an excellent great mind! and thoughts! 

I absolutely adore this book, for the thematics expressed, for the density of thoughts, for the original storytelling that the writer decided to propose to his readers.

An excellent reading for this summer-time if you want to explore other parts of the world, if you want to think, if you want to learn more on other religions, and last but not least if you want to discover the meaning of home for an immigrant; a meaning that passes through a special country and an adorable city.

Highly recommended.

I thank L'Editions Grasset for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori