LA CONDIZIONE DELLA MEMORIA

An intimate short novel about a crucial moment in the relationship between a mother and a daughter.

The two women spend a long last summer together in a small abandoned town in central Italy in the house that once belonged to the family: Anna, separated and with a grown-up son who now lives far away, and her mother, an elderly woman with the symptoms of a latent illness. They live in a suspended time there, keeping each other company. The house has a garden and vegetables, a rocky hill right behind it, and it's surrounded by the streets of the village and many trails. Signs of ancient stories ask to be heard, and memories mingle. The troubled childhood and early life of Anna's mother is marked by the premature death of her own mother. There is the bond with her father, a man "difficult to love and to hate" who leaves her and her sister with three eccentric, unmarried aunts to take care of two orphans. There is a young brother, and two new wives. And there's the memory of the joys of first love, the bonds between the sisters, the opportunities that life has offered. Corsalini explores the ways in which we inhabit and experience family memories, the stories that are passed on to us, the fragile consistency of those moments in which we return to the past, which becomes a refuge and a place to question our present. Giulia Corsalini is a professor at the University of Macerata and author of essays on literary criticism. Her debut novel La lettrice di Cechov (2018) was published by nottetempo to much critical acclaim. It won several literary awards and was published in German translation in 2021.