is there a genre that can be caged in the definition of “women’s literature”? The question raises many doubts, but not many men try to dissolve them. Instead, it is talked about in courageous events such as the festival Inquiete, born in Rome “to dedicate a time and a space to the talent, intelligence and creativity of the writers of today and of the past”. Elvira Serra, journalist of the “Corriere della Sera”, is a writer who participated in Restless in 2019 presenting the stars of Capo Gelsomino.
“Tutto da vivere”, Solferino (pp. 224,euro 16,50)
in the coming weeks she will be engaged in promoting her new novel, Tutto da vivere, published by Solferino. There is a character in the works of Elvira Serra, the participation with which makes her female characters live. It is a fever, an electric current, which probably derives from her years of journalistic activity and the scrupulousness with which she has always followed, told and interviewed real-life characters. Mind you, no misunderstanding: on the one hand there is his excellent journalistic work, the result of curiosity and his professional rigor. Here is a novel where writing, plot and characters build that unmistakable web that is called literature. The point of contact is precisely in the participation of the writer. In everything to live Elvira Serra makes us discover the lives of four women, different in age, behavior and history, whose lives end up meeting united by an unpredictable embroidery of history. There are no heroines in this novel. There are women struggling with extraordinary impulses, intense emotions, voids that give dizziness and falls without mediation. There are families, which we immediately recognize because, as happens in the best literature, this manages to tell our story easily. There are moving generosity and pettiness that we once again learned to recognize very early. And there are men, with different roles and different characters. The best of them, for the whole novel, does not say a word. He doesn’t need it.
here, in the face of these personalities, their stories, mistakes and redemptions, the author is never detached. You hear through the pages that the pathos of the protagonists has begun to beat in the hearts of those who created them and it’s passed through the hands to type on a keyboard, their faces, their thoughts, their pain.
Elvira Serra
In the novel, everything starts from an apparent normality: we find Anna, committed in a fashion shop in the centre of Milan, in a moment of rest to the Sempione Park. Not far from her Agnese, a sad girl with a stroller, whom Anna has often seen in those parts and who out of the Blue asks her to hold her two-year-old child for a while. Agnese’s best friend, Lorenza, is a hostess immersed in a tormented love with a man who is too famous and unreliable. Finally we discover Luciana, head of the Police Station, who is divided between a demanding job and the hospital where her husband struggles with death while waiting for a transplant. Within a little more than twenty-four hours, the lives of the four women intertwine, in an increasingly dense way.
female portraits that emerge sharp even in opaque moments, immersed in a Milan lived with the affection of those who arrived from afar and without frills was welcomed. Elvira Serra has the ability to make the places speak and emerge the deep interactions with the lives of her characters. One cannot miss the Sardinia that the author brings in blood and emotions, but she strikes the affectionate attention for Milan from Via Sarpi to Moscova, at the rear entrance of the police station in Via Montebello from where the executive Luciana enters her office. Little Leo is at ease, like so many children, between Parco Sempione and the aquarium. Even the hospital of Niguarda, with all the drama of the stories it hosts, offers its most welcoming appearance.
it is not clear if there is a genre that can be called Female literature. There are literature and talents capable of expressing it. Many of these talents bear the name of writers. Elvira Serra not only tells the stories of her protagonists: she accompanies us in the world, in the joy and contradictions of relationships, in the hope necessary every day. It helps us to question the mystery of failures and the shock of happiness. He never gives answers, he gently poses all the questions we expect from a novel. That offers us questions that we often do not have the courage to ask ourselves.
the author
Elvira Serra’s novel Tutto da vivere is published by Solferino (pp. 224, euro 16,50). Elvira Serra was born in Nuoro in 1972. She is a writer and journalist of the “Corriere della Sera” where she deals with News and costume, interviews and curates the “Polaroid”column. He also writes on the blog “the twenty-seventh hour”. Tutto da vivere is her fourth novel: she has already published L’altra (Mondadori, 2004); il vento non lo puoi fermare (Rizzoli, 2016), le stelle di Capo Gelsomino (Solferino, 2019)
