Diventare bestia

In this layered page-turner, Sacha Naspini reinvents the bildungsroman as a dark, Tuscan-Gothic exploration of the visceral transformation one undergoes during adolescence – and the intrinsic risk of turning into a beast. Giacomo feels like a prisoner of the remote Maremma countryside, born to a family that cannot afford to let him dream of what’s beyond the woods. School is hostile to him, as it is to Matteo, his only friend who shares his solitude. The rural community is shaken by the discovery of a panther’s escape from a lawyer’s illegal zoo. While Matteo wants to kill it to become famous, Giacomo weaves stories to intertwine the creature’s fate with his own, seeking the attention he craves. He soon discovers that he truly does have a beast inside him, pawing to get out. His parents reveal that years ago he was involved in an incident that they tried to cover up with pills and lies; since then, he has suffered from episodes that make him beast-like, leaving him with no memory of what happened. When the private and public spheres collide, with Giacomo “turning” in front of his classmates, his reality shatters. The path to the woods shields him from the consequences of the damage he’s caused, but even the wilderness offers no true safety: it’s home to a feral animal, and he must learn to coexist with it. Living through one crisis after another, Giacomo grows up on the boundary between an unjust world and one his inner beast has forged for him. Naspini’s latest novel takes us on a psychological descent full of twists, where the answers to the questions of adolescence are found in the thin distance that separates man from beast.