Aria di famiglia

Our main character and narrator is going through hard times. He is experiencing writer’s block, he can’t write a single line of his novel, and he is also losing interest in his academic work. All of a sudden, he receives a piece of news that throws him for a loop: the death of his high school classmate Veronica. He had a fling with her back in those days; he always admired her non-conformist intelligence and the courage that had led her to emancipate herself from her father’s tyranny. How could she die at fifty when their teenage years still seemed to be just around the corner? Our protagonist is distraught. Meanwhile, he is accused of sexism at his university by a bellicose colleague who is an ultra-feminist. In his opinion, she is a paladin of a bogus battle that is actually aimed at climbing the echelons of power – especially if compared to Veronica’s real social activism and the concrete and substantial battles in which she engaged at the time. After being kicked out from his university, he is melancholic, isolated, and an outcast, until he receives some surprising news: a juvenile court asks him to become his nephew’s guardian: a ten-year-old boy called Noah whom he has never met. His parents had recently died in an accident, and now he is all alone in the world. After having many doubts, the protagonist accepts and starts having the time of his life with the child. Little by little, Noah wins him over entirely: he sees in him his same disorientation as an orphan combined with a sweetness and naivety that will help him look at the world through different eyes.