Sortilegi

Comment:

“Bianca Pitzorno’s characters have always been creatures who refuse to conform to their times and claim the right not to be locked in the cage of an “appropriate” behavior. Moreover, they are ready to live out the consequences of their uniqueness to the fullest. Thus, the protagonists of these pages make us dream and speak to us about ourselves, our fears, our pettiness, and the mysterious and fantastic power of words, which can kill or save. A highly enjoyable read in which the ‘spell’ attributed to superstition, or actually cast, is the prerogative of women and serves as the backdrop to the deleterious role of envy and competition between women. For example, the case of the midwife who relentlessly pursues the alleged witch in the first story, or the stepmother who abandons her stepchildren to die in order to favor her own kids). On the other hand, the narration highlights the spontaneous sisterhood that supports and saves, like the wet nurse and the embroiderer who raise the orphans, the child embroiderer who naively neutralizes the spell in the second story or the Sardinian sister-in-law who sends the scent of her native village’s sweets to distant relatives in the third one. Taken individually, the first story also makes us reflect on the role of the perfect victim played by a young woman alone in the face of the collective desire to find a scapegoat to exorcise illness and bad luck. “