Adriana, Flavia, Sibilla and the others…

The story is not a simple genre. It involves control over one's writing and one's ego as an author, which perhaps would be led to overflow in the novel. It requires awareness, discipline, a narrative talent that knows how to dialogue with sobriety. Only by relying on these qualities and educating them over time can you obtain a series of stories such as those that form " Adriana e le altre " (Bompiani, 2023, pp. 216, also e-book), the latest literary effort by Alain Elkann .

They are stories of girls, of women, of mothers, of daughters (but there are also male figures) and in transparency, tense stories of couples who get lost, find each other, transform themselves. There is Emma who for her twelfth birthday wants a pig as a gift and unleashes a dispute between her parents, only to then resolve the matter on her own, with her simple childish resources. Meanwhile, the adults realize with ruthless desolation that by now they no longer have communication or intimacy except through their children. Then there is Marcella, who awaits the arrival of her niece Filomena on a Greek island and rereads her life, the frustrations, the path of wife and mother. Marcella who through her niece savors, albeit fleetingly, the ancient passion and sensations too forgotten. And again Sibilla, who casually wears a ruby necklace that belonged to a maharaja and then to her mother, a person as fascinating as she is incapable of bearing the idea of old age. Leini, who flies to New York to be a grandmother and indulges in a new passion, but faces the greatest drama while Adriana, who offers her name to the title of the collection, is torn between children and lovers.

Elkann, thanks to these female figures, seems to build a modern gynaeceum, where to find and find oneself in the whole kaleidoscope of human emotions . With skillful strokes of the pen he outlines a daily life made up of small things and big tragedies, normality crossed by memories and regrets, the many forms that love takes over time. It reminds us how existence, however trivial it may seem, remains an experience to be lived and savored to the fullest , especially if one keeps away from cynicism, selfishness and individualism. After all we would like (we could, with common sense and good will) to make our own the words with which the author encloses one of his protagonists, Leini: «His life was full of good intentions that were not fulfilled, but deep down she had been happy. He had always begun to live other lives, other experiences, because he had a deep trust in others. She had gone through many painful, inexplicable things over the years, but she had been able to accept them, overcome them and move on. He knew well that we do not know the meaning of our acts and our lives and remain wrapped in a mystery. And it is precisely that mystery, that not knowing what will happen a minute later that is our salvation".