NORA E LE OMBRE
(Nora and the shadows)
Palomar, collection Antiquam Matrem, 2006
ISBN 88-7600-173-5
Pp. 228, euro 15
About halfway through the 19th century, Aurora, daughter of an earl, records in her diaries the visits paid to her by mysterious creatures, which are in reality ghosts of penitents, who want to persuade her, always in a more cruel fashion, to pray for them and intercede in their favour. Today, Nora, a religion teacher in the midst of a spiritual and professional crisis, looks into Aurora. She copies her diaries, explores her thoughts and shares her worries. The exceptional character of the young girl strikes Nora, who hopes to find some answers to the uncertainties behind her growing misery in life.
Nora e le ombre is, in its way, a ghost story in which almost gothic atmospheres are contaminated by the no less worrisome routine of our days. It is a novel inhabited by shadows, and not only those that demand with ferocious obstinacy Aurora’s help, but also those that grow longer on Nora’s life and on the blurry and petty lives that surround her at work and in her family.
Giona A. Nazzaro, in Rumore: “Nora e le ombre reveals an author that completely masters his own voice, as well as an acuity that enables him to probe the most unsettling aspects of reality”.
Alessandra Buccheri, in Angolo Nero: “Nora e le ombre is upsetting not so much for what it says, but for what it does not say. Because of the story of Aurora, martyr and victim of strange ghosts; of some odd coincidences that occur in Nora’s life; of the general feeling generated by the absence of dialogue; of the dramatic human events, not supernatural at all, that happen at the end.”
The first pages of the novel are on:
http://ombrelarve.blogspot.it/2008/08/nora-e-le-ombre-una-pagina-dal-cap-2.html
http://ombrelarve.blogspot.it/2008/08/nora-e-le-ombre-una-pagina-dal-cap-4.html
http://ombrelarve.blogspot.it/2008/07/nora-e-le-ombre-una-pagina-dal-cap-4.html
http://ombrelarve.blogspot.it/2008/07/nora-e-le-ombre-una-pagina-dal-cap-8.html
The booktrailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocb-VTFKj6c
