Post by @federicabalbi

Emanuele Trevi’s elegant writing brings us on the footsteps of his father, building a fantastic portrait of the old man. After sharing memories of his lifetime, the symbol for the father becomes his old house, initially set on sale.

Throughout the narrative, the father is called ‘il mago’ (‘the magician’), or sometimes ‘the healer’ or ‘soul-healer’, as a literary transposition of his career as a Junghian psychoanalyst. His attitude resembles that of a magic creature, compared to famous Gandalf, insofar as he seems to lock himself inside his mind, and only rarely come out to the ‘real’ world. His wife used to repeat to everybody ‘Sai com’è fatto’ (‘you know what he’s like’), a sentence that becomes a symbol of the impossibility of getting to know this peculiar character.

The posture of the narrator is that of recording, and making sense of, the events that happen around him. His only active choice is to move into his father’s flat, a decision which still seems to be dictated by mysterious forces acting around the house. This attitude gives place to hilarity, especially when the character of ‘la Degenerata’ is introduced, the intrusive and resourceful cleaning lady, who undertakes all sorts of initiatives, except cleaning.

Through a learned, gnomic writing, the narrator sets himself as an ironic archaeologist of his own life, leaving us a pleasant, refined novel, published by Ponte alle Grazie.