PER FUTILI MOTIVI

Woody Allen meets Paolo Sorrentino in this tragicomic novel.

In early retirement, Sapo Matteucci thinks he's enjoying some well-deserved idleness, but his children do not agree. There is Costanza, fifteen years old, who never gets up on time for school and doesn't devote herself to her studies, all wrapped up in her fiancé Mezzapensione (as her father has renamed him), from a good family but a bit of a strike-breaker, a bit of a thief, a bit of a junkie. There is Ernesto, handsome and good-looking, gone to study in Scotland, urged on by his parents who have high expectations on him, and feels unhappy and defrauded. There is a marriage that doesn't work, an initial crack that extends and swallows everyone up in a spiral of turmoil and reflection. Even a pet rabbit that seems to grow out of proportion and gnaw at everything, and a dog catching everyone's love. A family prognosis that leaves no hope. The protagonist will have to reread his own existence in reverse, re-evaluating those signs of destiny already promising in his extraordinary name, in an eccentric and unique childhood, in the theory applied by his father, for which one could do anything but work. In the most banal and cruel war zone of our earthly adventure, the family, where everything is destined to become conflict, recovers the original joy we all lose sight of, that of being in the world, and sings of the exhilarating and poignant bond with everything in the world that holds it back. Rich in gimmicks and formidable minor characters, Per futili motivi makes the most of the comic register to recount the tragedy of being in the world, even under the best of conditions. Sapo Matteucci spent his youth in Viareggio. A journalist, he worked for 'Il Globo', 'Playboy', 'Bell'Italia'; he collaborated with 'Traveller', 'Repubblica', 'Paragone' and 'Nuovi Argomenti'. He has lived in Florence, Milan, Rome and Turin, where he worked for Einaudi. He has published Q.B. La cucina quanto basta (2008) and C'era una vodka. A Spiritual Education (2010). With Nicolò Bassetti he wrote Sacro romano GRA (2013): the film Sacro GRA by Gianfranco Rosi won the Leone d'Oro at the 2013 Venice Film Festival.