Lunapark

Comment:

“This book comes from a story included in the anthology Chiamarlo amore non si può: 23 female writers tell boys and girls about violence against women published by Mammeonline, now Matilda editrice, in 2013. The story, through a series of metaphors represented by the rides of a fairground, talked about the type of violence that is perhaps the most hidden and the most difficult to show, that which occurs in the domestic sphere. It was told by the victim indirectly, the narrative voice of a child without a name, without a specific age, without a physical description… in short, without a body and without an identity, so that the reader could only listen to the terror, the doubts, the anguish, the scars of these victims that we all have in front of our eyes, perhaps without actually wanting to see them. That narrating voice, however, still had a lot to tell, so it took on body, name, age, friendships, habits, character, school, desires that we will find in this short novel. If it is truly a good book it will above all bring many questions. Surely there are the questions, the dreams, the struggles of Benny and Stella, the two thirteen-year-old protagonists who, like all teenagers, are caught between childhood and adulthood, between choices they would like to make and decisions they cannot take, strong feelings that are difficult to understand, identify and manage and that make them feel on edge… in the jaws of a lion. The only lifeline: true relationships and deep friendships.” [Publisher website] A compelling novel with characters one cannot help but identify with, that takes one’s breath away, and ends with an unexpected twist, functional not only to the narration but more profoundly to showing that appearances very often deceive. Functional above all to show how violence is cross-cutting across all social classes, lurking in apparently respectable and respected contexts, implying difficult and painful but necessary choices.