Is there a distance that protects us from the explosion of a love that ends? "Probably not...", Luciana Albertini, the protagonist of Romana Petri's new novel, Distanza di sicurezza (Neri Pozza, 2026, 368 pages, also available as an ebook), would answer. Luciana still bears the sudden abandonment of her husband Vasco engraved in her heart. And while during the day, life drags her far away—the painting that has now made her a world-renowned artist, her faithful dog Barabba who consoles her in her despair, and even that alpha letter she paints on her forehead every morning to remind herself she's a winner—the nights are endless and filled with questions, one above all: why?
Vasco Dos Santos knows the answer, what drove him to end that relationship he stubbornly refuses to call by its name. He knows the anger, the discomfort, the sense of failure that gave him the strength to leave Rome and return to his Lisbon. In that family quagmire from which she had tried, in vain, to pull him out: a cumbersome and absent father, a sister who survived hell, the memory of an immense and fragile mother, the charade of family dinners. He knows the reason he turned his back on that strange, perhaps overly talented, woman. Luciana and Vasco are both suspended, facing a choice: let go of what has been and be reborn into life like butterflies, or remain trapped in the past, in resentment, like eternal chrysalises. With this novel, Romana Petri rediscovers the characters from Family Lunches (Neri Pozza, 2019) and delves into the very foundation of all stories: human relationships in all their simple complexity. She restores the truth behind the dream, the possibility behind the ending. We first asked Romana Petri where the decision to return to the familiar characters from Family Lunches came from:
The characters always make their own decisions. If they haven't finished telling their story, they tug at your sleeve and ask you to keep going. They have a certain autonomy. We don't always make the decisions. They encourage us. And then you start writing again almost immediately. Because they're terrible, they also give you a deadline. They're not all the same; there are those who say: hurry up. And others who give you all the time you want. I think the one who tugged at my sleeve the hardest was Albertini. I hope she does it again.
How have Luciana and Vasco changed since the previous novel?
I don't know if time changes people or if, with time, people reveal themselves for who they are. But I'm more inclined to the latter. I think that during the time of falling in love, it's natural to exchange embellishments, we adorn each other. Then, all that glitter gradually fades away, and the person is revealed as they truly are. Albertini, in reality, has remained herself. She's had great success as a painter, but she's still herself. Vasco, on the other hand, who has never had any success, has become resentful and has harbored pure evil: envy. Ultimately, he abandoned her to gain a bit of prominence.
What does his family of origin represent for Vasco?
His castration. His father is a man who came from nothing and became a politician, then a company director. He's in the newspapers and on television almost every day and is extremely rich. Vasco has told himself his whole life that he wasn't in competition with his father because they didn't do the same job. His father, moreover, considers him a nobody and has never done anything to hide it from him. He always gives him a few pennies to get by. He enjoys humiliating him. In the end, you become a bit like others see you. His mother also had a huge influence, but out of necessity. She had to care for a daughter born with a deformity, and Vasco felt in competition with her too. He considered himself the 'unloved' ever since he was a child. But he was wrong, because his mother, Maria do Ceu, adored him. That's why he likes swimming and always being in the water, so as to never leave his mother's womb.
What does "safe distance" mean to the two protagonists?
For Vasco, it's a way of hiding. Ultimately, when he left Albertini, he did so in a very ambiguous way: without ever giving her a real explanation other than, 'I'm no longer happy' and 'I'm no longer comfortable in the relationship.' This was to hide the real reason, which he wouldn't have found flattering, and to find in her pain the kind of prominence he's been chasing for a long time without ever achieving. For Albertini, it's Vasco's unspoken words that she agonizes over, especially at night when sleep won't come. But luckily, she's a great, brilliant artist. And art, as we know, chooses people to torment them, but then, in the end, it saves them.
The book opens with some verses by De Andreade taken from the poem "Residuo" which, among other things, says: "If a little of everything remains, why shouldn't a little of me remain?...truly a little of everything remains? And is it comforting that it is so?"
Our brain is a huge container, but it too has its limits. Life continually fills it up. And it has created an outlet as well as an inlet. And so, in the end, it retains only a few memories, often not even the most important ones in appearance, but the most important in the unconscious. I believe this natural thinning out is a great blessing. If everything remained, we would never find peace. With just a little, however, we manage to stay afloat.