The thriller starring the sleeping therapist is released on Tuesday 8 November from Longanesi. That this time, as well as in the mind of a little girl, he digs into her childhood, triggering a series of short circuits
A good game does not last long, the saying goes. There are at least two categories of people who would disagree: one is that of children, all children without distinction; the other are the writers, not all for just the good ones like Donato Carrisi, who can make a game last for 400 pages by keeping alive in the reader attention, curiosity, surprise and fear. As in the bestselling author’s new novel, The house of lights (Longanesi), in bookstores from Tuesday 8 November.
So it is not a coincidence if both of these elements are present at the opening of the thriller: the game and the children. The very first page of the novel d le rules of a childhood game called the little wax men or simply the candles or, with a semantic shift in a macabre key, you were there (and you are no longer there). Rule 1) The little wax man chases the living. Rule 2) Whoever is touched becomes a little wax man and chases the living. And so on. almost a Faustian pact between the reader and the writer, an invitation to play the game: a contract that does not need to be signed, is signed by turning the page and starting the story.
The scene opens with some children having fun in a garden; the summer of 1997, we are at the Argentario. The pastime, seen by an adult, is just chasing, catching, fretting, talking in code and making noises; in the eyes of another child: everything has a logic, a sense, a why. a game, a matter of life or death. To escape the others chasing him, a child runs into the house, goes up to the first floor, crosses the room that once belonged to his mother, reaches the balcony; the railing gives way and he flies, falls and dies. But only for thirty seconds then his heart starts beating again and he gets away with a broken leg that will force him, however, to spend part of the summer period watching others play.
They have passed twenty-five years from that summer when the gang of kids lost their innocence forever: then something finished, then something started.
That child Pietro Gerber, one of the happiest characters created by Carrisi (Martina Franca, Taranto, 1973), the best-selling author, 4 million and 700 thousand copies worldwide (of which over one and a half million in Italy). Gerber a child psychologist who uses the technique of hypnosis to bring out the best or more often the worst of what his little patients have inside; he inherited the profession and learned the techniques from his father. For the therapist Gerber, adults have found a nickname that is meant to be reassuring but at the same time sounds disturbing: the baby sleeper.
Carrisi’s readers have already made the acquaintance of it in previous novels The house of voices (2019) e The house without memories (2021): in the first Gerber dug into the mind of a little girl hiding in that of an adult, Hanna Hall, who ever since a ghost haunts him; in the second the hypnotist psychologist opened closed doors artfully created by someone called the Affabulator in the psyche of a little boy.
Carrisi had spoken of these two works as of twin books: now, with The house of lightsthe brothers become three.
The case that Gerber, who in this adventure appears very fragile and vulnerable, called to deal with concerns Eva, a ten-year-old girl. The little one lives in a large isolated house on top of a hill in the countryside of San Gimignano: he almost never leaves his room, suffers from agoraphobia; he does not attend school and has no playmates of his age; to look after her are a housekeeper, who returns to her family in the village at sunset, and a girl like her, Maja Salo, who came from Finland to study Cimabue and Italian art.
it was the latter who presented herself in Gerber’s studio in Florence. What worries her is not the fact that the little girl says she has an imaginary friend, one of those figures that the little ones invent and believe to be true, but that despite having tried the little girl to remove him from her mind, he not only does not want to leave, but react by hurting her. An imaginary friend turned into a real enemy: bruises and scratches on the legs and arms that Eva inflicts herself on the instructions, on the orders of whoever commands in her head.
From the young woman’s story, the specialist recognizes the first, worrying signs of childhood schizophrenia as possible: without timely intervention, those sporadic manifestations of the pathology are destined to degenerate into an irreversible condition, a dissociation from reality. Hence the urgency to do something and in consideration of the particular condition of the child, Gerber’s decision, anomalous with respect to his way of operating, to go on the spot, to hypnotize Eva at her house, in her bedroom. And never as in this case the surrounding environment has a weight, a soul: a presence that in its manifestations (shadows, darkness, ghostly lights, noises) as well as in meteorological events seems to seek and find empathy with the characters.
When Gerber through hypnosis enters Eve’s head to try to get over this tangle of personality, here is the magnificent twist: inside there is someone who is waiting for him.
Someone who knows his history, his weaknesses and who makes him waver in the certainties of a life, making fun of the reasons of science and of common sense … How can a child of today know of events that took place when she was not even born? How can Eve’s (imaginary friend’s) words ring out in Gerber’s head, unlock childhood memories that he first did not know he had? They are short circuits between inquiries inside the mind and outside; sessions where fiction and invention challenge reality without ever contradicting it. The hypnotic practices featured in the story are actually used in therapies – the author’s warning in one Use -, the effects produced are exactly those described.
it is appropriate to stop here with the unveiling of facts and characters: the plot, as often in Carrisi’s books, an anamorphic drawing, made up of points of view, precise joints, narrative twists, intersections of fine threads, resistant and fragile at the same time, which define an architecture designed to be observed by the reader. Carrisi, who in these days in theaters with his third test as a director, the film I am the abyss taken from his book of the same name, confirms with The house of lights known skills: quality of writing; originality in the construction of the story; safety in managing the full and empty parts of history; and ability to play with the player to the end.
Events
Donato Carrisi’s novel, The house of lights (Longanesi pp. 400, 23 euros), arrives at the bookstore on Tuesday 8th. Among Carrisi’s thrillers, all published by Longanesi: The prompter (2009), The tribunal of souls (2011), The girl in the fog (2015) e The man of the labyrinth (2017). The author presents the book in preview Monday, 7 pm, online at LibrerieLive, on Illi February.it Carrisi has created a special path for images, videos and words on the themes of the book. In November it will be Saturday 12 (12 noon) in Rome, at the New Europe Library, I Granai; Monday 14 in Novara, at the Circolo dei Lettere (18), and in Turin, Circolo dei Lettere (21). And again on the 20th (6pm) at Bookcity Milano, the Triennale’s Hall of Honor; 22nd: in San Don di Piave (Ve), at the Mo-derna bookstore (6 pm) and in Treviso, at the Canova bookstore (8.30 pm); on the 26th (5 pm) in Varese, in the Montanari Room. In December presentations in Florence (1), Reggio Emilia (4) and Bari (14)
The dark tale
Eva and the empty chair the dark tale written by Donato Carrisi. It is a children’s story, the author’s first of its kind, linked to The house of lights but autonomous and that can also be read by adults. The book, with illustrations by Paolo D’Altan, comes out on November 29 (Longanesi, pp. 80, euro 12); explores the loneliness of the little girl in the big, dull house on top of the hill: her desire to meet someone to play with … The protagonist of the fable, which the author has dedicated to his children, Eva who in the novel is the patient that the therapist Gerber cure through hypnosis. Carrisi has also created an original path through words, images and videos, dedicated to the seductions, charm and dangers of the hypnosis method: the author proposes it to the public during presentations.
November 7, 2022 (change November 7, 2022 | 11:42)
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