THE VERTICAL SUMMER

The vertical summer by Chiara Sfregola  published by Fandango is the book I received from Manuale di Mari whom I thank.

I don’t know if you already have an idea of what a ‘vertical’ summer might be like … I have wondered about it, and although I found the explanation in the book, I retain my own personal vision created by reading it.

Thinking about it now, vertical could also be the split between those who love summer and those who hate it.

How do you experience the summer season?

The protagonists of the book experience the emblematic events of their lives in summer: the timeline is in fact a relay of seven different female characters.

Very often we say ‘characters that revolve around’ in this case instead they move vertically, as in a descent inversely proportional to time passing, like a fall.

Like the summer that somehow represents the origin of all the events that strike in succession like a domino.

Dominoes whose tiles seem to fall even before they are hit.

Because they are imperfect tiles, unsatisfied with their role.

Everything seems too easy and it is exactly the ease with which things happen that makes them an unimportant outline, even successes, prestigious situations and luck seem totally irrelevant.

When nothing makes sense any more, the very construction of the book changes, like a restart whose initially stunted and unconvincing steps turn into a crescendo that corresponds to real growth.

The reader is taken to the epilogue with literally different writing, a form I particularly love.

And suddenly it all comes together.