Post by @federicabalbi

It is with terrible honesty and with acute lucidity, that Ada D’Adamo tells the story of her own life since the birth of her daughter Daria, who was born with a level of disability of 100% due to the brain malformation known as holoprosencephaly. At the turn of fifty, Ada is diagnosed with breast cancer and can no longer devote all her care to Daria. 

In this thin volume, which I would define as a testimony, there is no space for morality. The practical causality of life takes over any speculation, recrimination, or metaphysical search. Here lies, in my opinion, the strength of the book: in the avoidance of a certain rhetoric, and in the focus on events and difficulties, from which political claims are made.

Ada D’Adamo makes a case for abortion as the possibility to freely make a choice, in spite of the love for her daughter. She accepts the contradiction: these two elements are not mutually exclusive, they are both present in her. She does not romanticise her situation, but she blows up the concept of motherhood as sacrifice. She engages in a fight for institutions to help in situations where they could have a very significant impact in improving the quality of life of the disabled person and those around them, but they are too often absent.

By recording her daily struggles, the author shows how her ‘normality’ was different, and how much loneliness came from being left outside of the general norm. Her cancer diagnosis makes the balance shift, changes the rule of such a hardly established game. 

Come d’aria was published this year, and the prestigious Premio Strega 2023 was assigned to the writer posthumously. 

Publishing house: Elliot

On Goodreads: Come d‘aria