books
noon, December 30, 2021 – 20:58
“The equation of the heart” to be released in February for Mondadori
from Mirella Armiero
Is Maurizio de Giovanni changing his skin? Apparently the Neapolitan writer had been thinking for ten years about the new novel announced today on social media, “The equation of the heart” (Mondadori). There are no serial characters, no commissioners, no inspectors. The story is that of Massimo, a former professor of mathematics, introverted, taciturn, habitual, who lives in Procida. To break the rhythm of his habits, the phone call announcing the death of his daughter and son-in-law in a car accident: his eleven-year-old nephew, Francesco, is in a coma. Massimo arrives in the northern city where his daughter’s husband made a fortune in the food industry. He is in fact the only relative who can assist the child even if he is practically a stranger to him. Alba, who was Francesco’s babysitter, tells him about the family he worked for: a happy couple, very well integrated into the small bourgeois society of the province.
But the portrait doesn’t hold. And above all it seems that the accident was anything but a coincidence. Massimo, who wanted to return to Procida and its habits, remains. He delves into the life of his daughter’s family, and, on the advice of the doctor, begins to entertain his grandson, still absent, by talking about the only subject he knows: mathematics. In the light of the facts that come back to the surface, the daughter’s life sounds mysteriously painful: if he had been there could he have helped her?
The writer talks about it on facebook, in the form of a dialogue, specifying that it is neither a detective story nor a noir, but a “love story”, that is the one that is born between grandfather and grandson, engaged in talking about mathematics but with the intention of getting to know each other and becoming a family.
December 30, 2021 | 20:58
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