2023-12-13 20:40:01
by FRANCO MANZONI
The novel (Sperling & Kupfer) by neurologist Lorenzo Sassoli de Bianchi revolves around a family story and a female character, a painter, who hides a mystery
Human existence emerges from the meeting and contrast of opposites. Those original drives in constant struggle with each other: Good and Evil, the lamb and the wolf, eros and thanatos, innocence and perversity, love and hate. Following Leopardi’s thoughts, in the Dialogue of Nature and an Icelander we read precisely: The life of this universe is a perpetual circuit of production and destruction, both connected to each other in a way, which each continuously serves the other, and to the conservation of the world.
From these reflections the neurologist Lorenzo Sassoli de Bianchi (Paris, 1952) certainly took inspiration to outline the protagonist of the compelling novel Evangelina from a spiritual point of view. The action unfolds between the historic village of Aterrana, a hamlet of Montoro in the province of Avellino, Bologna and Paris. The author, who structured his fourth narrative work in 29 chapters and an epilogue, confesses in the prologue that he was inspired by the meeting with a young painter during his experience as a volunteer doctor, among the first to bring aid to Irpinia after the terrible earthquake of 1980. He was struck by the girl’s temperament, who continued to paint with passion day after day.
The name chosen for the main character is certainly a programmatic decision: Evangelina in fact means bearer of an effective message. the good news, Edenically pure, ready to counteract the subversion of lust and ethical collapse. The angelic young woman with golden hair hates social media, she prefers solitude. After graduating in Philosophy in Salerno, she returned to Aterranea and for a year dedicated herself to caring for her mother Cristina, who was seriously ill, until her death. From the climate of the town born linked to popular beliefs such as the cave of the Devil’s Rock and the janare, witches and priestesses of Diana, Evangelina Esposito wants to escape to look for her father Andrea, who left home when she was a nine-year-old girl.
She then asks the carpenter Bruno o’Chiacchiarone, the gossip of Aterrana, for news: she learns of a half-brother, Tiziano, slightly younger than her, born from a clandestine relationship, who is now in a recovery community for drug addicts. Furthermore, Bruno states that his father fled to Bologna. New tragic events await the protagonist. Hosted in the city of Bologna by the family of a professor, one night he tries to rape her, fascinated by her beauty. Then her brother steals all her money and on top of that plunges a knife blade into her abdomen. While Evangelina is in intensive care, Tiziano dies of a heroin overdose.
At this point the author also becomes a character and transforms into the narrator, always using a direct and flowing style: by chance he arrives with his wife Veronica (to whom the novel is dedicated) in Aterrana on the occasion of Titian’s funeral. In the hospital, however, the neurologist learns that Evangelina contracted syphilis as a child. He decides to send her to Paris to stay with one of her cousins, as the young woman wants at all costs to find her missing father. Evangelina leaves with her Turkish friend Nazim Emre, also a philosopher, and they spend a satisfying night of sex in a hotel. They know that they will now take care of each other. But what other misfortunes await the young woman? What is her unspeakable secret? Will he be able to succeed in the Parisian galleries? Will he finally find that long-awaited father? In any case, Evangelina is sure that God lives inside her, even if sometimes she has the absurd habit of hiding from herself.
December 13, 2023 (modified December 13, 2023 | 7:37 pm)
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