L'EQUAZIONE DEL CUORE

This isn't part of a series and for the first time de Giovanni writes outside the rules and boundaries of genre and serial characters, digging into feelings, and into the humanity and afflictions of his main protagonist, Massimo, an introverted retired math professor who ends up assisting his nine-year-old grandson in a coma, after the car accident that killed both his parents.

In front of the mystery of these deaths, there is no police, no forensic. Just the search of a lonely man who tries to understand what happened to his daughter, talking to a child and using math - variables, numbers, equations - to question himself, to confront the unpredictability of life and repair broken family bonds. After the death of his wife, Massimo, a retired math professor, moves to a secluded house on an island in the Gulf of Naples, and lives there alone, fishing methodically, his social contacts limited to rare and banal phone calls with his daughter Cristina, who stays in a small town in a wealthy province of Northern Italy. His orderly life is suddenly shaken by the news of a serious car accident: his daughter and son-in-law, who was part of an important family in the food industry, are dead. His nine-year-old grandson, Checco, is in a coma and Massimo is the only relative left. He needs to leave and go there; and he ends up assisting the young boy, basically a stranger, talking to him, day after day, about math, equations and about the fascinating harmony of numbers, waiting for his awakening. The return to his island is postponed repeatedly and Massimo begins to investigate his daughter's past and life: the circumstance of the accident suddenly seems not so casual. Outside the hospital the eyes of the inhabitants of the town are all upon him and the boy: he could be the heir of a business empire and the well-being of many depends upon them... too many interests are conflicting. From there on, how much mystery must be faced? How much pain must he suffer to understand what happened and who his daughter was?