READING ITALIAN: FABIO STASSI & ALESSANDRO D'AVENIA

    Fabio Stassi,  La lettrice Scomparsa  (2016)

La Lettrice Scomparsa (The missing reader) is a literary mystery. A book which contains an entire shelf of good books (Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, John Fante, Jorge Amado, Luigi Pirandello, Honoré de Balzac, George Simenon among others),  an investigation on fiction and life, a novel wondering how much life and fiction interfere with each other. Can fiction help men and women endure life? Can life, real life, make it to a good book page? Can reading a novel be therapeutic?

Fabio Stassi is a writer I truly appreciate and whom I have already mentioned and reviewed here at FLY HIGH! His latest novels are set in Rome and deal with fragile characters coping with the harshness of reality. They are watched and described through the lens of poetry, music and fiction,  which are Stassi’s solid background.

The protagonist is one of my unlucky colleagues, one who has lost his position after being a temporary teacher in several different schools for years. Now middle-aged and unemployed, Vince Corso has to reinvent himself and to find a way to survive.  Bibliotherapy is the first thing that comes to his mind: as a teacher of literature and a book lover, book counseling is an activity he thinks he can be successful at.

BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS - MY LATEST READS

The Shifu Cloth (The Chronicles of Eirie) by Prue Batten

Back to Eirie everything seems so familiar and extraordinary at the same time. My latest journey to  that land of magic and fantasy was last year with Lalita and Finnian (A Thousand Glass Flowers) . Such a beautiful, gripping love story with surprising twists and a poignant epilogue!  They have lingered somehow in this story too, THE SHIFU CLOTH, since the protagonist is Nicholas, Nico, their son. 

After his beloved cousin Isabella is kidnapped while with him, his sense of guilt or the shock leaves him dumb, unable to express his loneliness and sadness. His only aim in life since then is to find Isabella and to bring her back home.

Isabella, however, now a slave living in the relatively comfortable residence of her masters but destined to live in a harem, has become an expert weaver of rare skills. What she can't do is to renounce her freedom   forever. This is why she has never surrendered to the idea of going back home and she bravely plans her own escape.

The two separate paths of Nico and Isabella meet after a series of fortuitous encounters and discoveries. They will get back home for a bittersweet, unforgettable finale.