La notte che ci gira intorno
(The night twists around us) Book not yet available in English
Summary:
Today is the darkest day of Alex’s life: his father’s funeral. Yet it is precisely in this darkness that Alex meets Yuri and falls in love for the first time. Yuri is a promising young soccer player who lives on the outskirts of a small town, surrounded by alpha males. Loving him is not easy. Yuri prefers to hide his feelings from the rest of the community, and so their relationship remains secret. But rumours spread and, as their love grows stronger, so does the hatred around them. Will their love be strong enough to survive the flames?
Edited by: Centro MeTRa - Università di Bologna (Italy)
Comment:
“La notte che ci gira intorno” is a novel centered on Alex, a gay boy who finds himself facing a particularly difficult time. His father has died after a painful illness, his mother is depressed and can’t even get out of bed, and the adults have decided that he will have to live temporarily with his little brother and their grandmother, a gruff and cold woman. Transplanted from the city to a small country town, forced to work in his grandmother’s inn, bullied by the local kids: nothing seems to be going right for Alex. Except for his crush on Yuri, a promising soccer player whose dreams are not understood in the slightest by his farmer father. It is important to emphasize that the story takes place in the early 2000s, a century ago in terms of LGBTQ+ rights in Italy. The novel is written in the first person and easy to read, but also harsh, just like a crush on the wrong person. In fact, despite the title and cover, which seem to suggest a book with a particular sweetness, the text turns out to be bitter and harsh. Being homosexual is not an issue for Alex, who also experiments with makeup, but it is a problem for the environment in which he lives, and above all for his beloved Yuri. Adults appear unreliable, absent, if not directly violent. Alongside uplifting LGBTQ+ stories, we believe that in children’s and young adult literature there is also room for sad novels, such as this one, with difficult love stories that seem hopeless, set in an environment that is completely hostile to those who do not conform to traditional gender roles. We conclude by observing that the book is effective in presenting numerous innovative characters from a gender perspective, including: an overweight gay protagonist, a grandmother who is anything but stereotypical and has almost no caregiving skills, an honorary Albanian aunt who runs a bar, and a widespread and natural representation of working women.