Nemmeno con un fiore
(Not even with a flower) Book not yet available in English
Summary:
A family like many others: mother, father, elder daughter (a teenager), younger son (in secondary school). So it seems to Nicola, the youngest of the family, who blames his mother’s frequent bruises on her weakness and carelessness, his sister’s irritability on her becoming a woman, and considers his father a superhero, capable of protecting his family from all dangers. When his mother meets Sarolta, a homeless woman from Eastern Europe, life suddenly changes. In defiance of the strict rules his father imposes on his wife, she decides to take care of the elderly, sick woman. Above all, Nicola begins to understand that his family is not a paradise and the closer he gets to the truth, the more hell seems to take on the appearance of his father. [Publisher’s website]
Edited by: Centro MeTRa - Università di Bologna (Italy)
Comment:
In this novel, Fabrizio Silei succeeds in telling the story of violence against women in a gentle and non-didactic way through the naive and innocent eyes of a ten-year-old boy. The protagonist, who has a real devotion for his father, receives from him a sort of macho and conservative gender education, learning that women must be dominated and protected even from themselves, since they are somehow inferior to men. Gradually, however, his trust in his father cracks. When he is confronted with episodes of violence and threats of which he has a hint or which he witnesses directly, the child undertakes a painful journey of coming of age and awareness, finally accepting that his father is violent and as such must be separated from the family. The other characters are also well crafted: from the adolescent sister, lucid and rebellious towards her father, to the figure of the mother, at first passive and subjugated in her victim role, then gradually becoming more aware and braver. The epilogue does not fall into an easy happy ending, nor into the temptation to demonise the figure of the father, whose story is finally told and the possible origin of a mindset that the other members of the family cannot and no longer want to accept.