The story takes place in Girifalco, a little town near Catanzaro, in Calabria, during the months before July 20th 1969, the day of mankind’s landing on the Moon. The main character is a postman, one of the many literary character who play the role of the inepts: he’s a man without qualities, affected with an inner inability in truly living his own life. Therefore, thanks to his profession and to a peculiar natural gift – his ability in reproducing anyone’s handwriting – he lives through other people’s life (but also inside his own memory of some old events): he reads and keeps away, by copying them, all of the letters coming inside and going outside Girifalco, moreover, he sometimes rewrites them, intervening in his fellows’ destiny. To say it with the author’s words, he “found an adeguate consolation in others’ paper lives”. When he opens a sealed envelope (a love letter addressed to some Maria Teresa, or maybe – who knows – some Teresa), the story sets off, in a concatenation of events tangled up together in different ways. Through homonymies and misinterpretations, considerations about the real meaning of life and unfathomable rules of fate, through a series of unlikely coincidences, the parallel and secret stories (tragic ill-fated love stories, emigrations, separations) of his countrymen, along with an affair of political corruption, fraud and land exploitation (Mount Covello deforestation, in return for a mythical factory), up to the conclusive solution of the various bindings of the story.
A novel somehow out of time, with a style harmoniously swinging from a very high literary to dialectal (Calabrian) expressions, in a continuous flow between classical references (the three old twin ladies, echoing the Fates, the postman recalling Hermes) and country culture and superstitions (the jinx). The author, with his melancholy gaze on the world, on mankind, on love, manages to raise this microcosm to change it into a universe where anyone can find everlasting human passions and emotions.
Domenico Dara was born in Catanzaro on February 2nd 1971. Brief essay on coincidences is his literary debut, widely acclaimed by critics and readers, that has won various awards, among them: Premio Palmi, Premio Viadana, Premio Corrado Alvaro and Premio Città di Como. He also was finalist at the prestigious Premio Calvino.
Pub date: May 2014
Length: 352 pp
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Dario Conidi
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Gazzetta del Sud
Domenico Nunnari
La Calabria che non c'è più rivive a Girifalco
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Andrea Bressa
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Il Quotidiano
Alessia Burdino
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Il Quotidiano
Isabella Marchiolo
Apparenti casualità
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Francesca Ferraro
Vincitore XX Premio Viadana 2015
Vincitore XII Premio Corrado Alvaro 2015, sezione Opera Prima
Vincitore II Premio Città di Como 2015, sezione Esordienti
Vincitore XIX Premio Palmi 2014
Finalista XXVI Premio Italo Calvino 2013