The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

A novel that I meant to read for ages, and one that I only just recently got around to reading. 

On the one hand, it remains a poignantly moving book, one in which - despite not being able to identify with the main character at all, at least in my case - the reader truly comes to care for the narrator and wishes her a smoother future than her present. 

On the other hand, however, I am ashamed to admit that it's a novel whose plot I found, ultimately, forgettable: mixed in my head with what I know of Sylvia Plath's own life, I actually had to look it up on Wikipedia to remind myself of Esther's personal history and her love life. 

Lei E’ Volata – Marica Ferrero

And for the 100^th post of this blog, I am going to write a couple of lines about the worthy winner of the world-renowned (not really, by the way!) literally prize “Città di Vico del Gargano” in 2005.

This is a book that is written with a soft touch from an author who, at some point in her life, must have liked (loved is definitely too strong a word!) working in the health system, with its huge challenges and small successes. Given the talent displayed, it’s weird thinking that its author hasn’t really published more in terms of fiction works (she has published plenty of travel guides, proofread an edition of the Divina Commedia, and wrote a remarkably odd book about dogs’ names).

Disclaimer: you will be hard-pressed to find this book in an Italian bookshop these days and, somehow, I have the feeling that so many of the anecdotes in this novella sound a bit too familiar (to me and my dad at least). And why is that? It’s simple, because the author is “just” my mother (and there goes the little credibility I had earned so far). But seriously: given the dismal state of current Italian literature, I’m not quite sure why Paola Mastrocola and Michela Murgia should be more widely read than my mother. Sadly, I’m not quite sure this is much of a compliment though...