La libraia
(The bookseller) Book not yet available in English
Summary:
The world of books told through the eyes of a very special girl. It is evening. A young woman called Lia has just closed the shutter of a small bookshop and is sitting in the room. She goes through her books, until one in particular takes her back to when she was 11 years old, to the night she decided to run away from her foster parents’ home. From here on, the story of Lia, a rebellious girl with a complicated life, unfolds. It is her encounter with a mysterious bookseller and with books that will transform her life… An ode to the power of books and reading. [Publisher’s website]
Edited by: Centro MeTRa - Università di Bologna (Italy)
Comment:
Lia is a troubled girl who rebels against a “difficult” life, marked since childhood by the absence of her biological parents. Her mother conceived her very young with a migrant man, felt unable to bring her up and decided to give her away. Throughout her childhood and adolescence, Lia experiences various foster care situations that do not work out, followed by her systematic return to her host communities. The girl shares her memories with the reader: the difficult and unsuccessful attempts to reconnect with her biological parents during her adolescence, her first work experiences, first as a waitress in a restaurant and then as a dancer in a club with a bad reputation. Lia’s rebellious, provocative, and transgressive nature is, however, a source of trouble: she is arrested for drug dealing and risks going to juvenile prison. However, she is redeployed to a bookshop, where she works as an assistant to a particularly sensitive and empathetic bookseller. The woman manages to get deep into Lia’s soul, seeing in her the rebellious, unscrupulous and reckless ways as well as the wrong choices of her youth. Finally feeling at home, Lia no longer needs to escape, and returns to the bookshop, where someone has a human legacy to entrust to her. In a dialogue made of love for books and writing, the bookseller becomes a spiritual mother and a loving guide for Lia, the one she has always lacked in life. Thanks to her, she understands that one can make mistakes, but that it is necessary to forgive oneself, as well as to forgive others. And that recommending a good book is a good way of caring for others, after listening to them and sharing the pain that lurks deep in their hearts. At the death of the bookseller, who is cremated with her best-loved books, Lia respects her last wishes and scatters her ashes in the sea, although she feels that the woman’s presence will remain alive in her.