When the province is our whole world

Living in the province , outside the spaces, even mental, of a big city is something that can enter you and not leave you for a long time. It can also never let you go. The same faces, the same streets, the same bar, the same company. They can be something reassuring and at the same time suffocating.

Leonardo, the protagonist of Alessio Parmigiani's debut novel "Stelle per pianeta" (NN Edizioni, pp. 224, also e-book), knows this well. Leonardo was born in the province and has learned to fully savor the vices and virtues of the province. In Lavagna , a Ligurian town where alleys, porticoes and motorway viaducts alternate, our protagonist has learned that life flows apparently placidly and immutably like the current of the Entella river.

Leonardo and Gabriele, known as Gabs, have always been friends, friends like you can be in a small town: planets that orbit and attract each other until they become inseparable. Leonardo has never felt like he was up to Gabriele, but he thinks he is the only one capable of curing the fragilities that hide behind the image of the perfect boy that Gabs always manages to convey. For this reason he cannot believe the rumors that fall on his friend, the act of violence he is accused of , not even when he sees the lives of the other boys in the group turned upside down and Gabriele himself flee elsewhere. Leonardo simply cannot accept that the microcosm in which he has always lived can bring out even the worst instincts in certain people. He cannot see how in the province there can be a sense of exclusion, of abandonment, alienation that becomes frustration, sensations shared especially by the youngest who find themselves in a certain sense peripheral within the society in which they live. So peripheral that they are willing to do anything, even violence, just to make sense of an existence that in the dynamics of the province has no sense. For this reason, despite everything, Lonardo remains, trying to put the pieces back together but, when Gabriele returns to Lavagna years later, he will find himself forced to face his own faults and omissions.

A novel that explores the extreme limits of friendship , “Stars for Planets” shows us how this noble sentiment can be mixed with contradictions, adoration and trust , but also with lies, silences and secrets . Alessio Parmigiani then focuses his intimate and compassionate gaze on how each of us must confront the facets and dark sides of relationships and must find the strength to carry our own cross, made of guilt, shame, cowardice and selfishness. Only in this way can we initiate change and find that strength of spirit that allows us to accept the truth and reach that peace that is achieved by forgiving… and forgiving ourselves.