Little girl
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Summary:
The narrator of this novel is engaged in self-discovery during that moment of transition between the fluidity of childhood and the crude definitions associated with growing up. Summer at a campsite nestled in a pine forest, evenings around the campfire, swimming in the pool, Maddalena, her lifelong friend, and her juicy gossip, the older, almost mythical counselors like Anna, who sees and understands more than she appears, and some mysterious and intriguing foreign boys. A crowd of sensations and surprises, prodigious and bitter moments, and the joy of a discovery: what a precious gift it is to find someone who sees you for who you are and better than you can see yourself. (Amazon)
Edited by: Centro MeTRa - Università di Bologna (Italy)
Comment:
With “Little Girl”, Alice Keller gives us a short but layered novel, capable of conveying all the emotional and identity complexity of the transition from childhood to adolescence. In just over seventy pages, the author manages to condense a true contemporary and sentimental education, where summer camp becomes a liminal space, suspended between before and after, between what one was and what one is beginning to become. Keller captures adolescent thoughts, made up of profound reflections and sudden impulses, small rites of passage and big questions about who one is and who one wants to be. This is possible through the direct and sincere voice of the protagonist, that is fragmentary and at times poetic, yet always authentic. The encounter with the young German tourist, who calls her ‘little girl’, is charged with a particular symbolic intensity: a different gaze that briefly manages to really see her, to name her in a new way, perhaps closer to her inner truth. The novel moves naturally between crucial themes such as gender identity, the changing body, friendship, trust, and betrayal, without ever succumbing to rhetoric or simplification. The presence of Anna, a ‘mythical’ animator and non-normative adult, embodies a welcoming and queer presence in the broadest and most generous sense of the term: someone who observes without judging, who accompanies without directing, who understands without invading. The writer tackles gender issues with great sensitivity: particularly successful is the metaphor of the eel. This animal does not develop sexual organs until it sets off on its long journey to the Sargasso Sea, becoming the poetic and symbolic key to the story. Every subjectivity has its own timing, every transformation is a journey, not a predetermined destination. “There are eels that begin their journey at a few years old, others that wait sixty years, others that will never leave and remain neither male nor female throughout their lives, just yellow eels.” “Little Girl” is therefore a coming-of-age story, but also a delicate and powerful reflection on the fluidity of identity, on the value of the unsaid, and on the need to be heard even before being understood. A book that speaks to young people, but also questions adults, inviting them to look without prejudice, to listen, to leave room for metamorphosis.