Sometimes it happens that you move to a place that you don't know and that you didn't want to know. This is exactly what happens to Simone, who finds himself in a deserted village in September, a San Something where he will have to attend high school, with a father who is always at work. Simone left behind a mother and a brother, and something serious must have happened; Simone has bad thoughts, but he doesn't say them, he keeps them at bay by walking and inventing. So Simone decides to dedicate the week remaining to the start of school to discover San Something: he explores it, day by day, as if it were the forest crossed by Hansel and Gretel, or a place to study with animal eyes like White Fang, or to travel with the giant steps of the BFG, the Great Gentle Giant. And every time, in the center of the town, he meets Sara, who will be his treasure map.
Brilliant and delicate at the same time, " I'll wait for you in San Something " (Camelozampa, 2023, pp. 112, available in highly readable font for everyone) is a short novel about the difficulty of dealing with the world of adults and the complexity of becoming adults, without losing the magic of childhood.
We ask the author, Beniamino Sidoti, first of all: what was the starting point?
«For work I travel a lot, and I often see small towns, anonymous neighborhoods, and try to imagine the life they hide. Once, in particular, I was wearing earphones and listening to music: immediately what I saw became a film or a video clip, the soundtrack of which was in my playlist. So I realized something: when we are in a new place we have the possibility of experiencing it as something we know, and I started thinking. Soon a story emerged and a boy, Simone, had recently transferred. I thought about his discomfort and imagined he was there alone, in a new country, an ordinary Saint Something; then came the questions: why is he alone? Where is his mom? Where is your brother?".
How does Simone feel about moving to the new country?
«Since it is Simone who tells the story, we discover what he sees, and we don't know what he is trying to hide, not to tell. Simone is afraid. Simone decides not to collaborate: but he can't be angry with his dad, as sometimes happens to us. Partly because it's not the father's fault; partly because Simone needs him so much that he can't get angry. Then he gets angry with the town: and calls it San Something, San Paese, This and that... But he's not stupid, and he gets a little bored: then he decides to get to know that town, and he has an idea. He will explore the country as if it were something he already knows, one of the stories he has read or heard, and every day he will go on an exploration pretending that San Something is a wood or a forest, or a place full of angry birds."
Where does Simone's exploration start from?
«The first exploration is made starting from Hansel and Gretel: of course, Simone is eleven years old, and therefore he would be grown up. But in Hansel and Gretel there are actually parents who abandon their children: so it's the right fairy tale to start from. So he walks down the street, and pretends it's a path; he finds a square and pretends it's a clearing. Then in the square he meets a little girl, Sara: and he pretends that she is Gretel. So together they will be able to search for everything: their friendship is a game at the beginning, then an important relationship, as happens when we grow up."
What fears grow in him during his adventures?
«There are some new fears, those of a place you don't know: but by reading the book we discover that the scariest fears are those that Simone brings with him from the city he comes from. He is afraid that his parents won't consider him; he is afraid that his brother is ill or worse. He's so scared that he can hardly tell himself, let alone tell anyone else. But little by little he manages to tell Sara: knowledge heals, love heals, and Simone faces his fears."
And can adults help him?
«The help comes mainly from Sara, because she is the person who is there at that moment to unlock him, to accompany him out into the real world. But we adult readers understand that there are also all the adults behind it: the parents, the teachers, the doctors... and, if we want, also the authors of all the stories that are feeding him."
How did old-time fairy tales inspire your book?
«There is a very beautiful definition of the fairy tale: Italo Calvino says that fairy tales 'tell destinies'. It is also the title of a beautiful essay by Carla Ida Salviati: Telling destini. That is, within fairy tales there are no 'real' characters or individual destinies, but all our possibilities, as in legends or mythology: if in a fairy tale something happens to a princess, all of us (male and female and otherwise) can be that princess, who is not a person, but the moment in which we grow up, in which we become adults. Thus every treasure and every fairytale wedding speaks first and foremost of the new kingdoms that we manage to open up. Here: in 'I'll wait for you in San Something' there is this: Simone plays with stories and also thanks to this he manages to face his destiny and become Someone. O Saint Someone?