Thirteen long stories introduced by twelve months and their fragments. Thirteen overture in which the narrator of the atmosphere surrounding the city, which is characteristic of each month itself and its inhabitants. Milan and marked a dotted space: streets, squares, houses, buildings, rooms, lofts and time: fragments of a disintegrated mosaic that would like to recollect memories of the seventies, eighties and nineties but leaving, deliberately, a feeling of incompleteness . Fragment.
A novel by the constant references: lives that would find their unity in a scan of the twelve months but remain suspended: fragments, faces just hatched that vanish in the thirteenth month in which the death of Catherine (main character) instead of return to itself and all life meaning and fulfillment, it helps to give that feeling of incompleteness, not only to their own existence but also those of all the other characters. In the background, the echo of the American writer Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide.
Fragments of relations and friends who can not give to themselves and to others a deeper meaning to what they are experiencing. Characters shipwrecked "We are castaways my dear, survivors of heaven. Out of place in any place we , immersed in the great quête love: where only the loneliness seems to reign supreme. Each character escapes to another, you're set to fill the voids. Few projects and many dreams. A world of writers in their thirties looking for something that they themselves do not know how to define. An object of desire out of focus. Perhaps the eternal quête love. Betrayal, loneliness, unrequited love: difficult to recognize, if not impossible to walk along a stretch for a fragment of space and time.
The more you read and more forward in the characters seem to lose the traits that had characterized them. Catherine herself escapes to escape but the other faces the watchful eyes of the reader. As passers-by roads, streets, local. Pass and we hear the echo of their steps and their lives, such as "dreamers August "and the ghosts that still come to visit the places have gone through in life cha: " Who were the ghosts who live in the shadow of my courts? - asks the city in August - Perhaps those who have left things unfinished, many will find themselves on these same streets in a time that we call future ".
The narrator of the city streets makes framing camera, record sounds, footsteps coming and going like a maze: "I am a huge maze in the shape of a spiral where we always end up trampling again their steps, "articulates the voice of city \u200b\u200bin May. Milan's voice seems to turn into a hidden camera to film and voice returns to its interior and exterior. Sometimes the shot stop in front of a building, then here is a rundown of his tenants and a still image of themselves. Still lingers in a way, crossing roads, other times it takes us, in the interior, or framing the faces of passers-by: immigrants, young mothers, the elderly or "dreamers of August."
Along the months shatter eco: a way introduced in one chapter, is repeated in the next, as when in May, Catherine and her friend Kevin are captured by shrill voices of women who cry about having fun terrace. Voiceovers that materialize in a still image of names who live in the palace in Via Morigi. Palace became the real star of the chapter with all of his characters: the old sailor who has a beautiful rooftop terrace, the Jungian analyst, a painter, opera singer, the architect, the workshop stage, the old concierge and Catherine, a character catalyst. Core from which radiate all the stories of other players (junior and senior), which seem to chase each other and rotate them around, as well as to trample on the streets of Milan, in a ceaseless coming and going.
-camera voice of the city makes us stand in many homes. The big house of Charles, sixty union bank, bought for little and that rather than change itself in the realization of a life after retirement by the sea, turns into a grave which is home to a life without love, where what matters is the deference, the ' admiration and power. Or the restaurant Theatre Workshop with portraits of Marx, Lenin, Bakunin and Che Guevara on the walls, where they find themselves eating Catherine and her friend "poet register" Luca. Or the huge loft on the first floor of the architect Giorgio M, in a disused transport company, located in a poorly lit street, where - in the month of shooting in September - everyone has the opportunity to revise or meet someone. Or the "unfinished" - which gives the title to the story in March - the big house that receives the magazine around which revolve many young writers and artists, and where Sofia, the engineer, who has no desire to return to his construction site, meets for the first time the red Caterina.
Like a red thread, she runs every month, at first overwhelmingly in the background until you enter a scene in the spring to be taken away by death in Winter's Tale, in December.
Who is Catherine? A young woman who works as an editor in a major publishing house. She is passionate about poetry and literature, but now only wants to read poetry, the rest does not seem to affect them more. He works with a literary magazine. He had several stories: a period of eight years and then many others, floating. And 'the object of desire of many people: men and women. All the characters we meet her, fall in love or are attracted to. Twelve months, twelve names (although the characters in the novel are many more, like the rest of the month). Twelve photographs, introduced by the image of the cover, chosen by the publisher, where we see the author with his camera around his neck. She returns to us in January a photograph of Charles, the sixties Bank union office in early retirement from the bank without his knowledge that each morning includes the red-haired woman sipping coffee at the bar before going to work. In February, a photograph of Luke, the poet lost in love with Catherine register with which you dine at the Theatre Workshop: Two writers who love poetry, which seems to separate rather than unite them. In March, a photo of Sofia, the engineer who would like to involve in the participation in a literary competition, a woman Sofia "unfinished" that can not decide, who does not know what to do with their lives. In April, a picture of Nino, the colleague alcoholic lover of old maps with which Catherine is searching, in the neighborhoods Milan, the river is not there. In May, a shot of a couple Kevin and Fulvio that revolves around Katherine and asks her to be, but their lives, sometimes the bridge, sometimes an obstacle. In June, a photo of Robert S, the young bank crazy, thinking of seeing God in the blue belly of a spider, he contemplates the naked body of Cathy from the window of the building in Via Morigi, where they both live. In July, the author gives us a snapshot of his painter, also a bank that never fails to make portraits of Catherine, the paintings that she regularly goes on. Lea resumes in August, the long-time friend of Francis, with whom the young red has a similarity ambiguous in same month was also photographed the man in the supermarket who approaches the indifferent reading the poems of Catherine Hernandez. In September, here's a shot of Umberto, the literary friend who became his lover for a night, after the party in September: " two strangers who drown [ed] into each other the loneliness in which restless viv [e] . In October, the background image of the husband of Sylvia (who betrays her husband with Francis, who is madly in love instead of Catherine), a man who suffers the charm of this red-haired woman. In November, a close-up of the saxophonist Frank, the old friend of Lea, who loses head for the red-haired woman, and finally in December, shot in the dark: when death will turn out the lights on the life of Catherine. Yet all resumes and friends: Sofia, Fulvio, Luca, Carlo, Julius Francis will continue all their lives.
always in the background literature with poems by Salinas, Eliot, Hernandez, Sylvia Plath, and the Picasso painting, Van Gogh, Chagall, but also music with blues, jazz, Officium.
countless photographs where the characters seem to remain in the background or, conversely, to want to do some real self-portraits. Also change the camera point of view: some Sometimes the narrative is in first person, the reader follows the voice of the character, other times the camera wants to be more distant to tell, without being too involved. The same applies to the voice of the city who happen to speak in person or by letting telling passersby.
The same stories are unfinished, we read only fragments. Coma the "love story" between Catherine and Luke. Both live in this uncertainty of castaways. He constantly refused, he lives in waiting. You, forever in search of love unable to accommodate this. Two young men, although similar in every now and then, unable to meet in a newspaper who wants to plan a future. Only the passing of days. No commitments, always waiting for something to happen. The literature in the background that confirms them in this uncertainty. The poem becomes what unites them, but what makes them stay together. Two perennial singles, lovers of literature. Or the homosexual love between Kevin and Fulvio ol'attrazione teenager Lea test for companion Viola. Or the story of Francis, the saxophonist who pursues every year in Greece itself and never be found, only a great seducer of women and beyond, now in love with Catherine. A generation already contaminated by uncertainty, but years of being alive. Each character is an artist in his own way, or would like be. A world of young scholars with many problems but where you still do not feel anxiety about the economic survival rather than survival or artistic achievement. The photograph of this generation flows through the pages of the novel and Francis, remembering that one day, "said Katharine, to give us a clear and true picture:" See Francis, in lives like ours, without problems of work and survival, the only stage plays that we are loving. But not enough to be great players, need to find lovers who are up to the role. Search among the many, the only mirror in which they can . "
Clipboard taken from Maddalena Cavalleri, after reading the book by Elena Petrassi Fragments of the thirteenth month.
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