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Maria and Nicola apparently look as a well-established couple: he is an airplane pilot, a perfect cook and son-in-law; she is less perfect, one of those women who never find anything in their purse, with a past to forget. Maria’s life has been marked since she was a child, after her younger sister died – her sister who was an excellence in everything. Her family has developed around this mourning, her father works from home and stopped going to the office, her mother tried to have a relationship with her remaining daughter, but Maria knows that nobody has forgotten anything, and Maria knows that she killed Estate. After spending years getting by without a purpose, she set up an eccentric shop, Jewelbox, where customers go so she may think about and buy important gifts on their behalf or for them, for office promotions, for anniversaries, for marriage proposals. Maria finds gifts for every pocket, objects made of shells, tables, but also symbolic or bizarre ideas. One day, she gave herself to a former classmate, because the gift was for him and he always had a crush on her. Then Maria doesn’t think twice and tells Nicola everything about this betrayal, trying to move him from his perfect love, but Nicola cannot live without her and is more than willing to forgive her.

Maria’s discovery to be pregnant – a baby that Nicolas has craved for years – drives her to face her own expectations, something that has nothing to do with her job and leads her back in the past.

In a novel that blends a light tone with a disconcerting frankness, Erica Mou demolishes the sugary rhetoric of being a mother and tells how behind every perfect couple something unexpected can be hidden.


Erica Mou (1990, Bisceglie) is a songwriter, singer in Italian and English. In 2009 she débuted with the album Bacio ancora le ferite/I’m still kissing the wounds. In 2012 the song Nella vasca da bagno del tempo/In the Bathtub of Time, won the Lunezia Award. Her songs have been chosen as movie tracks by various directors, in Italy but also abroad (such as Third Person by Paul Haggis, Un Ragazzo d’oro by Pupi Avati).

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