All the risks of curiosity

One of the most original detective novels of recent years was certainly Pizzuta's hairdresser , in which, in 2017, the philologist Rosa Lentini made her debut on the noir scene. An irresistibly nosy philologist who together with her sprightly mother Evelina and a stuttering carabinieri commander named Drago forms an investigative trio as bizarre as it is capable of very fine intuitions. Five years after the first novel, Rosa Lentini returns to the bookstore with a new adventure with the title that is already a whole program: Girls too curious (Bompiani, 2022, Euro 17.00, pp. 240. Ebook too). At the center of the novel a story that starts from afar.

One evening in October 1974 the young journalist Wanda Girlando is killed in Ortigia. His death seems to be linked to that of a nostalgic antique dealer of the Twenties, but silence falls on the story. One modern April evening, Rosa Lentini announces to her mother Evelina that she intends to take a new year of leave and move to her beloved house in Pizzuta, in Sicily. From Pizzuta, in fact, the now former commander of the Drago carabinieri showed up, asking for their help to reopen the case of Wanda's death. So, Rosa and Evelina, a couple of sui generis investigators, get to work ... and the results will not be long in coming. To the author of the novel, Nino Motta (pseudonym with which the correspondent of the Corriere della Sera Paolo Di Stefano signs the story of Rosa Lentini) we ask first of all how the choice of a couple of detectives, mother and daughter, was born: "I always thought that the close collaboration between different generations can produce extraordinary results. Here the relationship between Rosa and Evelina has ironic nuances, because it is the daughter who teaches her mother and not vice versa, but the eighty-year-old mother is extremely willing to learn and very curious about the techniques that philology uses to study ancient literary works and modern. I would say that it is a symbiotic relationship between mother and daughter, often also a party game that results in a very fruitful collaboration. Sometimes it is the philologist Rosa who finds the right path and carries on the investigations, sometimes, unexpectedly, it is the old Evelina who has surprising intuitions and shows curiosity and courage ”.

How are investigative art and philology similar?

“Both police investigation and philology require the search for testimonies, comparisons, documentary evidence, the identification and analysis of clues and so on. Many philologists have developed the idea of research as a detective path, starting with a professor of mine named Maria Corti, defined by Umberto Eco as a Sherlock Holmes of literary studies. My protagonist Rosa Lentini knows this and puts her methods to good use to solve cold cases for which the same tools that the philologist calls review, collatio, lectio facilior and lectio difficile, 'described code', 'contamination', are needed. 'conjecture', which is the art of reconstructing and interpreting texts. I studied Romance philology and I have kept a great passion for critical editions that restore ancient texts and which I consider an enthralling reading as and sometimes more than a detective novel ".

The title of the book is "Girls too curious" ... why "too much"?

“Several female characters, unlike the many male characters, in my novel are clearly positive, even when perhaps they manifest some gray areas here and there. They are characters who do not stop in front of the obstacles posed by men, they face them or circumvent them with intelligent strategies. The courage belongs to women, first of all Rosa and her mother Evelina, who use their curiosity that is their desire for knowledge and justice to go all the way in the search for truth. The adverb 'too much' in the title has a double meaning: on the one hand it is a synonym for 'much' often used ironically in southern dialects - 'you are too strong', 'it is too beautiful ...' - to form superlatives. On the other hand, it denotes an excess: 'too curious' because they exceed the permitted limit of curiosity, to the point of putting criminals in crisis by tragically paying the costs with their lives. There are two characters in particular who probably end badly for their 'excessive' curiosity and for their courage set in motion to solve the mystery: they are Teresa and Melina ”.

Is curiosity female as in the proverb?

“The proverb perhaps has a misogynist undertone and uses the term curiosity as a synonym for gossip. But curiosity is anything but backbiting and is closely linked with courage.

What, in your opinion, is curiosity?

When I think of curiosity, I think of the Ulysses told by Dante in canto XXVI of Hell, where the Greek hero says to his followers to spur them: "Consider your seed: / you were not made to live like brutes, / but to follow virtue and knowledge ». Ulysses expresses the need to face every difficulty in the name of intellectual curiosity, invites his companions not to spare themselves, to ignite that desire, typical of the human being, to know the world beyond every border, invites them to go further , that is, to the point of risking his own life. Man's fullness and happiness lie precisely in this: in seeking the good and the truth at any cost. It is the opposite of cowardice and opportunism. Dante's admiration for Ulysses has as its object this noble thirst for knowledge, even if according to the canons of Catholic culture it was a 'mad flight', to be condemned. Here, curiosity is an often transgressive and uncomfortable virtue that will always find obstacles but which will always allow the world to move forward ".