Alba Donati

Alba Donati lives in Milan and works in the press office of a major publisher. How did she come up with the idea of moving to a remote village in Lunigiana to open a bookshop? The novel revolves around this question, and it does so in diary form, day by day. The author's immediate answer is that > things don't just come to mind; things smolder, ferment, clutter our imagination while we sleep, (...) and at a certain point they knock: here we are, we are your ideas, ready to be heard . Between the folds of the narrative, one can trace another, intimate and familial motive: returning to the house where she had grown up as a child—a house "half habitable and half sunk into nothingness," with two doors, one of which > led to the cellars, a place that added at least a couple of years to the analysis with Dr. Lucia , and the other led up to the attic via a new staircase built by her father, which then continued with a wooden one, because "paternal love had broken off." For anyone who has cherished the dream of opening a bookshop to live among these mysterious and fascinating objects, and at the same time wishes to understand why books sustain us in childhood just as in old age, Alba Donati's diary seems to promise unexplored worlds within the unconscious and the soothing function of literature. Instead, the editor who lived in the publishing world, among critics, publishers, and intellectuals, takes over: rather than a journey toward herself and her roots, the diary takes the shape of a survey of the books beloved by the author. There are numerous reading cues and interesting recommendations, but where is the story of the novice bookseller? Lunigiana dissolves; the daughter, the mother, and the father remain in the background, merely sketched; and even the flock of friends and benefactors remains voiceless. What is worse, however, is that the bookshop itself has no voice—that peculiar kind of shop so difficult to launch and manage today, in the face of such kaleidoscopic confusion. Beyond crowdfunding and "mail-order" sales, was it successful? How much toil did it take? What did she leverage? The diary form places the self at the center and is therefore a means to express anxieties, doubts, sensations, and feelings. Through a diary, one opens up slowly, one step at a time. In this account, the diary is merely a device that weighs down the narrative, rendering it repetitive, fragmented, and prolix. Why not read it? It is dull and banal; only the parade of recommendations holds any interest.