Luce. Una corrispondenza

In his letters, Nino writes to Luce about everything. He tells her how Kafka consoled a little girl who had lost her doll in the park or about a book whose protagonist is only allowed to write letters that are not about love. She responds by recalling her happy childhood with her grandmother in Romania, speaking of the theater where she plays Penthesilea or her photography exhibition on the absent face, and seeking his support in her sense of uprootedness. At the heart of their correspondence is the rejection of the world that Luce, as a teenager, once embraced a hunger strike followed by a destructive bulimic frenzy. Whether they discuss phantom limbs, deceitful psychologists, or a care home for disabled people whose residents sit before a silent television, whether they recall the Susman family’s deportation to Theresienstadt or tell the story of a Palestinian girl, these letters are steeped in tenderness. Through words, a disembodied connection binds the two correspondents. A novel of the twentieth century and of two intertwined lives, Luce leaves us with a question: in his search for a correspondence with his feminine side, is Nino, perhaps, writing to himself?