They are a bit of many stories with a single center of gravity, which is not the headquarters of Verdicchio Consulting, but they are Our silent wars which give the title to the novel. David Valentini returns to the bookstore with his second effort, ideally collecting the witness he himself posed at the end of Everything that could break (2022). He does it once again with Employment Edizioni, who for the first time publishes in the ‘Acute’ series a non -debutant writer, but who with the Milanese publishing house took his first steps in October 2022, at the dawn of the project launched just two and a half years ago by Alessandro Cattelan.

Valentini speaks of many stories, it was said, more or less connected to each other, from which the fragility, difficulties and choices connected to them emerge, which are the common denominator of all existence. It is not necessary to have read Everything that could break To enjoy the book, but having a background helps, perhaps, to appreciate some characters more and the evolution of the author’s prose. The book flows pleasantly, the pages unfold safely among the events of Filippo – his past and present, the relationship with Cesare who was born between the high school benches -, his sister Federica who returns to the capital and must deal with what he believed he had left behind, and still his brother Riccardo and his need to move away and find another place to feel fully himself. Then there are Paolo and his double life, Katia, forced to coexist with his father’s illness, Lorenzo and the ‘rivalry’ with Antonio: they could be friends, work colleagues, anyone’s family members. Certainly, reading the novel it will be difficult not to find some assonance with one’s life, there are many dynamics and intertwining that emerge, which are peculiar but in any case very common.

At the base of the book there are connections but also the dis-conconsctions that lead, in the course of life, to more or less suffered choices. To take on a behavior rather than another, depending on one’s personality, but also of situations and circumstances. On closer inspection are ordinary lives those experienced by the protagonists, a microcosm of attitudes, passions and suffering: Our silent wars They are not only those of those who populate the novel, they are those of all the people who find themselves having to fight with themselves and with others, defeat ‘demons’, take responsibility, decide to act or hide. There is no universal recipe to find a solution or make a specific choice, they clearly emerge the characters of Valentini: you can dress your courage and be protagonists at the front, or wear the helmet, hide in the rear behind a shield, and choose to collect the blows, without however falling into the daily battle. It is not a question of being winners or won, but of being alive.

Our silent wars It is a novel that speaks of relationships but also of understanding of oneself. And what is the best way to understand if not (also) through music? This is how David Valentini accompanies the entire novel with a real soundtrack – summarized at the end of the book -: a set of songs that “maybe they will be able to excite you as they have been able to do with me”.