Donnaregina

Who is ‘o Nasone really, accused of armed robbery, criminal association, mafia association, and 182 murders committed and ordered? This is the question asked by the writer whom the newspaper assigns to interview him, the super boss. She knows nothing about crime, having always dealt with teenagers, singers, actresses and show business people at most. Theirs is a meeting of two worlds that are very far apart and must remain so, at least in the protagonist’s mind. Yet, when he starts talking, something changes. This ruthless man who breeds pigeons and believes in UFOs begins to interest her. Not so much when he dwells on stories of theft, shootings and revenge, but rather because of the nostalgia that vibrates in his tales of women he has met and lost, friends who have been killed, and family ties. In short, when, without denying his past, the boss shows himself to be vulnerable. The doubt: is he manipulating her? It is on the level of emotional relationships that the boss and the writer meet: in the wounds of uncertain, perhaps flawed parents. In the mystery of children with whom they no longer know how to communicate and whom they fear they have lost forever. The confrontation between them, though still fraught with mistrust, then turns into a journey through memories, confessions, misunderstandings and projections, but above all revelations about children who are not what they believe them to be. Thus, when the protagonist finds herself searching for traces of Misso’s son in the streets of Naples, she realises she is looking for someone else: her daughter, who is slipping away from her. In the four years since her most recent novel, we have missed Teresa Ciabatti’s gaze, her unique style, her lucidity, her irony and the absolute balance of her phrasing. With the intensity and radical non-conformity of her writing, Ciabatti leads a protagonist who resembles her into territories that at first glance seem remote and indecipherable, only to bring her home more sorrowful and wiser, capable of recognising the glimmer of humanity wherever it appears.