Life chases us, even when we try in every way to escape it, we try to forget that the past, the bonds are not erased by putting kilometers and years between them and us. Escaping is what Marianna is trying to do - the protagonist of Sabrina Grementieri's novel "Il sole di sera" (Love edizioni, 2024, pp. 432, also e-book) - when an unexpected event breaks her daily routine as a young woman on the road.
Marianna, in fact, lives in a camper van and works as a seasonal worker in hotels. When, as soon as she graduated, she set out on a journey, she had no idea how long it would last. After fifteen years, she is still convinced that she made the right choice: the absence of roots, ties and affections, always ready to leave at the first sign of discomfort, make her feel free and safe from disappointments.
When her van suddenly breaks down, Marianna is forced to stop in an ancient renovated village in the Tuscan-Romagnolo Apennines: an enchanting place, populated by hospitable and curious people. While waiting for her mobile home to be repaired, she finds work in the village restaurant: she is an excellent waitress and Benno, the owner, is enthusiastic. A strong attraction arises between the two, which Marianna tries to stifle: she has no intention of settling in those mountains, so it is better not to become attached to anyone. The forced stop, however, opens a chink in her armor that allows memories to sneak in and change the cards on the table.
Because it is impossible to escape the past, as the author of the book, Sabrina Grementieri, confirms:
"No, I don't think you can escape your past. But you can face it and accept it, and draw energy from the injustices and suffering to move forward. I realize that it's a perfect theory and often too far from reality. But I also think that we don't have much choice: you can't rewind the film of the past and the only thing left to us is the future, and that's where we have to focus all our energy."
How did the story that underlies the book come about?
«As in my previous novels, this time too, the driving force that pushed me to write this story was the setting. In this case, an old abandoned village in the Apennines, which I restored and repopulated with my imagination. I wanted to tell of the charm of these remote places, of the silences and energy that still inhabit that place. And of the thaumaturgical power that nature exercises on men and women. The inhabitants of the village have chosen of their own free will to return to live there: not all of them have a painful past or wounds to heal, more simply they have preferred to get away from the frenzy of city life to get back in step with the rhythms of nature. Marianna, the protagonist, ends up in those mountains by chance, but soon realizes how strong their call is».
In short, no matter how long you have been travelling, you cannot live without ties and without some kind of rooting…
"As Aristotle said, we are social animals, we develop and perfect skills thanks to relationships, interactions with others. We can break bonds that harm us, or choose, like Marianna, to live a stray life. But, unless we isolate ourselves in a remote place far from any form of civility, we are never completely without ties. As for roots, there is a beautiful phrase by Cesare Pavese that explains the concept much better than I can: 'You need a country, if only for the pleasure of leaving. A country means not being alone, knowing that in the people, in the plants, in the land there is something of yours, that even when you are not there, it remains waiting for you.'"
What is there in her of the character of Marianna?
«The love for travel, for mountains, for woods and silence».
The book is full of pages and events...how was it writing it?
"It was a breech birth! Jokes aside, this book really made me sweat blood. I felt like I couldn't put on paper what was going on in my head, the emotions, the pain, the obstacles, the beauty. I wrote and rewrote it many times. Also contributing to these difficulties were the last few years of study which, on the one hand, taught me a lot, but on the other, made me more critical about my work. My approach to the written word has certainly become more professional, but there is still so much to learn!"
But in the end, would she like to live in a village like the one in the novel?
“Yes. Absolutely yes.”