A cool, hidden spot where all the toy balls and childhood secrets end up. A family looking for their lost tortoise just before moving. A child whose first smile selects who he will look like when he grows up. Another child who is born so small his mother dreams of having him sewn back into her belly until he’s ready to come out again. A mother who forgets her daughter in the car and goes to work and is unaware that tortoises can cry. A childminder who only eats fried chicken, wants to become a nun and forgets to turn off the gas. A spare room where a child cannot sleep because it harbours a secret so terrible it could bring the whole house down. A couple of parents who use made-up English so they can have adult conversations the children won’t understand. A mother who has lost her child and is not satisfied with logic, common sense, mathematics or life. A luminous little girl who attracts mosquitoes and can’t have popcorn at the cinema. Ten possible stories, ten glances at daily family lives. Light, accurate writing, able to convey even the most difficult, uncomfortable things, so real they are almost true.
“A pocket-sized decatalogue of possible motherhood”. Corriere della Sera
Daniela Gambaro, born in Adria in 1976, she graduated from the University of Padua and attended the Centro
Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, graduating in screenplay in 2005. She works in the cinema and TV and lives in Rome with her partner and their two children.
Short stories
Pub date: September 2020
Length: 136pp
Il Mattino
Nicolò Menniti - Ippolito
Quando il quotidiano cela l’eccezionalità
Gli Squadernauti
Giovanni Locatelli
Dieci storie quasi vere
La Lettura
Ermanno Paccagnini
Un decalogo tascabile di maternità possibili
Sul Romanzo
Giovanna Albi
L’universo interiore che ci abita raccontato da Daniela Gambaro
L'Arena
Chiara Roverotto
La maternità non sempre è un momento meraviglioso
L'Indice
Chiara D'Ippolito
Nelle profondità nascoste del giavasco
Patria Indipedente
Giacomo Verri
In vacanza a rischio zero. Con i libri
Radio 3 - Fahrenheit
Daniela Gambaro
Dieci storie quasi vere
la Repubblica
Le madri che siamo, non siamo
Le madri che siamo, non siamo
La bottega di Hamlin
Marta Lilliù
Cattedrale
Giavasco, di Daniela Gambaro
Chili di Libri
Dieci storie quasi vere – Daniela Gambaro
La politica del popolo
Margherita Sanna
Leggere e rileggere
Giorgia Negrini
La lettrice controcorrente
Alessandra Fontana
Rai Cultura
Dentro le crepe della vita familiare
Premio Campiello opera prima 2021
Prima selezione Premio Flaiano 2021
Finalista e menzione speciale Premio Calvino 2019