It is not snobbery and it is a strictly personal opinion: this year the average level of the finalist works of the Strega Prize is decidedly low. Strictly personal opinion, apparently widely denied by reviews – even enthusiastic – which is easy to find in online newspapers, sector portals and printed paper in general. I say it clearly: four of the five novels candidates for the victory of the most prestigious Italian literary recognition have not found my liking. A flattened rose – but this was already evident in the beginning and it is certainly not the reason for my criticism – on the autobiographical plan (also pushed) and the autofition. I have a favorite, a voice that detaches itself, at least from a stylistic and structural point of view, from the others.

Bajani

But let’s take a step back. This year the witch are contended for four known authors and the outsider. The most voted in the definition of the Cinquina, with 280 preferences, was Andrea Bajani with his The anniversary. Those who are a reader or still have familiar with the bookstores, from the end of January but also in the following months, will certainly have come across the gigantographies of the cover, batteries of the novel stacked on display alongside the cash register of the editorial group stores (Feltrinelli) who gave it to the print, and I can bet that at least one of the readers or readers of uisjournal.com was asked the question ” Bajani’s book? ” (It happened to me four times). It is this excessive and somewhat grotesque push (was there really needed?) That led me to procrastin its purchase and reading. When the presence in the cinquina of the witch was made official, then yes I decided to read it: it is clear, without being prevented in any way.

What I think of the novel I have already written (on this page you can find my personal reflection): a short work that tells a family drama, ten years after the last meeting of the narrative ego with their parents. A work that arises from the refusal of a very heavy patriarchal inheritance, of which, in one way or another, those who narrate has felt complicit over the years. It is a novel that speaks of pain, that runs out on the last page and leaves the reader (in this case who writes) the feeling of a cold story, in which more importance is given to the choice of the right word and the construct ‘effect’ rather than to transmit an emotion of pain, suffering or rebirth.

Newfoundland

With 226 preferences, Nadia Terranova with Cinquina with Cinquina with What I know of you (Guanda). It is the story of a woman who in front of the birth of her daughter decides not to allow madness, who has marked her family, take over. Madness has a precise reference in Venera, the great great -grandmother of the protagonist, who at a certain point, in his life – married and became a mother a first and second time – is hospitalized at Mandalari, the asylum of Messina. A story wrapped in mystery: the narrator several times wonders what is in all respects one of the protagonists of the story, family mythology, that is, the set of shared beliefs and narratives within the family, to clarify the figure of the great -grandmother, who has never seen, and which in any case appears in a dream.

Terranova investigates the power of memory, in a certainly intimate work, and at the same time it broadcasts the evolution and mechanisms of the Messina asylum in the first decades of the last century. The author writes and does so well, but in this last effort he seems to commit himself, perhaps, only for herself. He focuses on situations that slow down and weigh down reading, and in large portions of the novel rather than unleashing interest, boredom is generated.

Rasy

Continuing in the personal reflections on the five finalists, we are at the third finalist novel, with 205 votes: Lost this sea is by Elisabetta Rasy (Rizzoli). I have to be honest: I struggled to complete reading, if only as a genre does not reflect my liking. The writer, journalist and essayist travels with the memory to investigate the relationship with his father in different phases of her life, in a certain moment that has become delicate, and the one with Raffaele La Capria, writer and screenwriter close by age precisely to that of the father, with whom he intertwines a relationship of profound friendship along thirty -five years, until his death, a few days before turning one hundred years.

Rasy focuses on the one hand on the difficult branch affection and on the other on a powerful bond, but does it in an uncontrolled way. Search constantly cultured references that it seems to be pleased (nothing wrong, but perhaps a little exceeded), speaks of affection and abandonment going to look for a root in the epic, uncomfortable even aeneous in the underworld to look for the father Anchise, generating confusion in the reader who is ‘tossed’ between places and eras deeply distant from each other, in reality and in the fiction. All in a biographical and autobiographical work. The narrative line travels without a precise sense, it is ondivaga, it does not seem to have a leader or a precise tail. Confused and pretentious.

Nori

And continue with Paolo Nori, fourth in the ranking (180 votes) with I close the door and scream (Mondadori). Parma writer and translator, he is among the most distinguishable voices of the contemporary Italian literary panorama. Perhaps the most distinguishable. For those who have read at least something of his, simply read his phrase ‘in the dark’ to say with absolute certainty “This is Nori”. A colloquial and direct writing, with a very personal syntactic construct that largely follows the speech and is all a flow of consciousness. In his latest novels dedicated to the life of narrators and poets of the past (Dostoevskij and Anna Achmatova) mixes with ease biography and autobiography, and so does I close the door and screamwhich is ideally the third work of the cycle, dedicated to the life and work of Raffaello Baldini, a Romagna poet of the twentieth century. A novel that is not a novel in the classic sense of the term, as it is universally conceived, but is in a strictly contemporary sense. A novel that is a little wise, a little story of life, and still memories, notes similar to those that could be written in a bloc-notes or memories to be pinned in a personal diary.

Also in this work, Nori does not separate from his family universe, a little a blanket of Linus: and so there are the nicknamed wife ‘Togliatti’ (the reference is quite clear), the daughter ‘battle’ and still the grandmother Carmela, great source of inspiration, even in language, for the author. Nori is by those authors who love or do not love, the middle ground cannot be contemplated. The style of writing may like it or not pleasure, as well as the constant mix, between the pages, of private life and life of others – which should be the focus in a work dedicated to a specific person, in this case a writer. I appreciate the Paolo Nori ‘speaker’ very much, which I have followed with pleasure in different presentations and interventions, but little ‘digestive’ it (the term is passed) as a novelist. Net of this, which is totally a question linked to personal taste, I find that his book is disordered and repetitive.

Rol

And finally there is the outsider, Inventory of what remains after the forest burns by Michele Ruol, published by Terrarossa. It will be clear, at this point, that I consider it the best novel in the whole cyquina, certainly the most original and courageous. It is the story of mother and father who face the greatest pain for two parents, the death of the children: older and minor, in the book. Each of the chapters of the novel is dedicated to a specific object – there are 99 in all – able to evoke the memory through fragments of lived life and memories, organized with a precise criterion.

It is a work with an inventory structure (as the title states), made in chapters that run out in very few lines or a few pages, also leaving empty spaces: a risky choice, which only a capable writer, or daring, can handle giving a sense of completeness to the narrative. Ruol succeeds and also manages not to choose objects at random, he takes care of selecting pieces of present or past, ordering them in a way so rational as to make the narrative fluid, immediate and understandable. Not an exercise in style, but a perfectly orchestrated score. Despite a courageous approach, the author managed to release, not from the single page, but from the set of about two hundred who make up his work, a great drama, an explosion of pain, melancholy, at times even discomfort that remain and do not end with the narrative.

The favors of the prediction are not on its side, but cheering is lawful.