Tatà is the pet name for Tante, which means aunt in French.
There is no two without three, although Three is actually the second of Valérie Perrin‘s books I have read.
Valérie said she decided to write the story of an aunt after hearing a child shouting ‘Tatà!’
Does it ever happen to you that a single detail strikes you, turning into a kind of key to much bigger emotions or thoughts?
Where do you find your inspiration?
Valérie knows very well how to write a successful book, I imagine her a bit like an expert cook who uses many ingredients with the knowledge that they are right for the end result.
Tatà is set in Gueugnon in Burgundy, the author’s place of origin and deep province.
Gueugnon is famous for its local soccer team which has reached very high levels. Valérie’s father was a footballer in this team.
The heart of the story is told on the first page: the protagonist discovers that her aunt has re-dead.
Yes: re-dead, a term coined to represent the fact that she is told of the death of her aunt who has actually already been dead for three years.
Understanding how this is possible leads to the discovery of an aunt as immense as she is submerged like an iceberg.
Have you ever read Donato Carrisi? As usual, I work in reverse and started with the last book that came out: The House of Silences.
This book was a gift, and it was also the ‘container’ for a further gift, so you can imagine how happy I was to receive it.
The House of Silences is the fourth volume in what is so far a quadrilogy and comes to bookshops after the previous books The House of Voices, The House without Memories and The House of Lights.
Do you know any of these books?
Pietro Gerber, the protagonist, is a hypnotist specialising in paediatric therapy.
On the subject of hypnosis, I would love to know Quarc‘s opinion: in his All true Alessandro Depegi recounts his own direct experiences.
Regarding silence instead, would you like to tell me something?
In the meantime, I would like to quote two sentences from the book that struck me:
Sad people cannot hurt anyone precisely because they know pain well.
Every person has an indelible dream. A dream of which he keeps the memory for the rest of his life. Often there is not even a particular reason for this, often they are not memorable dreams at all.
By now you know that I have a particular weakness for dreams but as I am not normal, I cannot remember an indelible dream unfortunately.
I can, however, speak of a recurring element: water.
Don’t say you’re not already smiling thinking to Keep calm and pota.
I immediately lit up, also because Keep calm and pota is curated by Piöcc’s Café.
Café! A coincidence, or rather, I would directly say a sign.
A sign that I immediately grasped when I contacted the Teatro Centro Lucia in Botticino Sera.
Yes, you read that right: theatre.
Elena kindly explained that their artistic direction in recent seasons has been proposing a review of dialectal comedies from the Brescia area entitled ‘Èl bel del dialet a teàter’.
As I have already mentioned, I am very fond of dialect.
Keep calm and pota is therefore a dialect comedy, and Cafè di Piöcc a theatre company.
Elena also helped me contact the director: Manuela.
In two words: a revelation!
Quoting Queen Agatha: A clue is a clue, two clues are a coincidence, but three clues make a proof.
The founders of the Café di Piöcc are three friends who meet in the parvis of the cathedral church in Montichiari.
Money is tight and friends watch the gentlemen eat pastries and drink wine, but they can only afford water from the fountain: the Café di Piöcc then, that is, the poor man’s café.
At Cafè di Piöcc, stories, gossip and historical facts are told.
From these tales, one of the first theatre companies in Brescia was born in 1970, a troupe that was also the subject of a university thesis.
Manuela joined the company, gradually performing various tasks: props girl, prompter, actress with a small part, assistant director.
Until one evening in the rehearsal room she picked up a book from which an envelope came out with a letter that no one had ever seen.
In this letter, Beppe Boschetti, one of the three founding friends, had expressed his wish to leave the company in Manuela’s hands.
A story made up of people, a long journey made up of extremely remarkable theatre works such as I tre innocenti (The Three Innocents), inspired by news events, or Semplicemente donna (Simply Woman): a red chair and 49 changes of clothes representing the stages of life up to menopause.
And yet settings and periods vary while the common denominator remains the titles that are idioms, e.g. Petost che peji l’è mei insi or Ogné come la sàpes stada.
All the way to Keep Calm and pota.
Pota is the word that unites Brescia and Bergamo, an intercalary that, pronounced with the typical accent, is always very nice.
The author had the intuition to combine pota with the expression keep calm, linking up with Freud’s truth, the female Ego interjecting itself with the Super Ego, and communicating a message: love wins.
Speaking of messages, the Cafè di Piöcc also collaborates with the municipality of Montichiari for social work with the Legality in short project.
It can therefore be said that Cafè di Piöcc keeps calm but is unstoppable!
Many many compliments and a special thanks to Manuela Danieli.
Tomislav Takač is a writer whom I admire especially for how he shows belief in his dream.
About himself he says: My name is Tomislav Takač and I am a 32-year-old laborer and a beginning writer in Subotica. I started writing 4 years ago and since then I have been writing short stories and have written and published the novel Strigorovu Šuma.
He has been updating me on his progress for a long time, and in the beginning we tried to overcome linguistic obstacles because despite the great help of translators it is not always easy and straightforward to understand a written text without losing its distinctiveness.
However, Tomislav began to translate and write in English as well, so I was able to truly understand the nature of his book Strigorov’s Forest.
Originally started as Strigorova Šuma, the book has since been translated and Tomislav has also produced a kind of animated trailer.
Knowing me, you must have guessed that I really liked it immediately, from the first notes of the “soundtrack” … you recognized it too, didn’t you?
Rock aside, I became immediately attached to Erena’s character, I could say that she brought me into Tomislav’s world: a Fantasy world composed of fantastical figures but traversed by fully realistic action protagonists.
Here instead you can find the first chapter of Yelena, First Blood.
Among the other stories I particularly liked Jack which I also found moving.
Not only Fantasy then, not only Action, not only Science Fiction, but the sum of many different facets that come together transporting the reader on an incredible journey.
And Tomislav concretized this path in every possible way, even working with an artist to turn his story into comics as well.
Coffee is often mentioned.
Regarding the cafes, Tomislav sent me videos showing Sarajevo.
I thank him because it gave me great pleasure: so far my knowledge of Sarajevo was limited to reading Margaret Mazzantini’s Venuto al mondo, for which I thank both Monica and Elisa.
Do you know better than I do?
Tomislav was kind enough to send me this video that shows an interesting coffee route in Sarajevo and describes us Bosnian coffee and their Java
I got hooked on this tradition of “fortune-telling,” you know we had already mentioned the reading of the coffee grounds, but in this case the story being told and the star at the bottom of the cup are really enchanting.
I also found fantastic the coincidence that the particular street shown in the video of this Bosnian café was a street dedicated to shoe making.
And this is a small view of Subotica, Serbia, Tomislav’s hometown.
In the very first exchange with Paola, she told me about a coat by Vivienne Westwood worn to shoot a video, then the topics covered involved everything, but not in the sense of the common way of saying, I really mean EVERYTHING!
Paola is an artist at three hundred and sixty degrees, because her art resides is her true essence.
To tell the truth, I cannot enclose my idea of her in a definition: Paola is in continuous evolution, like a chameleonic, volcanic, and extremely communicative Soul, whose main aspect, however, is to always remain herself.
I absolutely recommend that you follow her Instagram profile because her stories are one more enchanting than the other!
These days her book La casa di cera: the journey of a girl who was not there has been released which unfortunately I have not yet had the opportunity to read, but I will leave you the link for Silvia’s review on the blog Come cerchi sull’acqua.
And regarding the calendar, obviously Paola has created a unique surprise, you can find it here!
Hi I'm Claudia and this is KCDC.
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