Satelliti

Satellites are celestial bodies that attract one another in parallel orbits without ever colliding. This is how Filippo and Tommaso have been since the very first day of their friendship: bound by an invincible force that drives them to seek each other out and push each other away, in an inexhaustible cycle. The centre around which they gravitate is Fassiano, a village at the foot of the mountains that seems cut off from the world. It is 1985, and Filippo has just moved there with his mother, after his father abandoned them. They are staying with Grandma Sandra, who has welcomed them back after years of silence and resentment. Tommaso, on the other hand, was born and raised in Fassiano: the village’s narrow streets and the woods surrounding it are all he knows. Filippo immediately feels drawn to him, and soon realises that behind Tommaso’s wild, wary demeanour lies a difficult past: he has never known his mother and lives with a father who, when he drinks, loses control and takes his anger out on him. As soon as they can, the two boys take refuge in their secret spot, a room at the back of Grandma Sandra’s house. They experience a primal, all-consuming attraction, though they cannot put a name to it. A step back, just outside their orbit, is Rebecca, daughter of the owner of Fassiano’s only bar. When Filippo leaves for military service, it is she who fills the void left in Tommaso’s life. Everything comes to a head one winter’s night, when the snow falls so thickly that it obscures everything. That night will hurl Filippo far from Fassiano and Tommaso, diverting his path for many years; but perhaps not forever. In his debut novel, Emanuele Bosso crafts a voice as essential and clear as the white, silent landscapes through which his characters move, capable of building underlying tensions and stirring the emotions even through what it leaves unsaid. And he tells the story of two lonely souls who meet and protect one another from the violence of their fathers and the world.