Uvaspina

He was born with an envy under his left eye, like a pale fruit embedded in his skin: Uvaspina quickly got used to being called by this name, which identified him with his spot. He can get used to almost anything: his father, the notary Pasquale Riccio, who is ashamed of him; Spaiata, his mother, who, having tricked Pasquale Riccio with her ‘malafemmina and chiagnazzara’ skills, is unhappy to have lost his charm and pretends to die every time he leaves the house. But above all, Uvaspina is used to his sister Minuccia, who since childhood has been inhabited by an energy that keeps his brother at bay with her unpredictable outbursts, her reprisals, the ferocity of one who knows how to strike at the point of maximum fragility, as when she tells him: ‘Your comrades were right, you really are a “femminiello”’. Yet only Uvaspina knows the trigger that turns his sister into a ‘strummolo’, a spinning top capable of wounding with its swirling metal tip. And only Minuccia can guess Uvaspina’s dreams, when the ‘strummolo’ keeps her awake and she can contemplate his fine features in her sleep. Around them, Naples: the city with its bubbling entrails, its districts stretching skywards, its tentacles immersed in the sea that faces it and penetrates it. It is precisely on the border between city and sea, between history and myth, that Uvaspina meets Antonio, the fisherman with eyes of different colours, who reads books and isn’t afraid of blood, who knows how to sail to Procida and give birth to a self-doubting ‘criaturo’. The purity of their encounter, however, cannot hide for long in the cellars of Palazzo Donn’Anna: the city draws them to itself, the ‘strummolo’ turns and their destinies are united forever. A passion besieged by mockery and contempt. The ambiguity of brotherly love, the need for darkness to bring light. Last but not least, there is the writing of the young Monica Acito, who takes her place with originality in a great literary tradition, combining the telluric force of the vernacular with the freshness of a story about youth, invoking the thirst for happiness that lies within each of us.