There are books that come into your life at the right time, when you need them most. So it was for me with La manutenzione dei sensi (The maintenance of the senses), written by Franco Faggiani: discovered by chance through social media and intrigued by the cover, I bought it on an impulse, without thinking too much. Nor purchase was more apt.
The story takes us into the lives of Leonardo Guerrieri, a fifty-year-old widower, and Martino, a temporary foster who is diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. To escape from a monotonous, gray and apathetic life, Leonardo decides to leave Milan and move to the Piedmontese Alps, in the upper Val di Susa. Thanks to the mountains, to a new life in an isolated house in the middle of meadows and woods at high altitude, finally free from all the superfluous, both manage to find their own dimension, to feel more alive and to cultivate their passions and aspirations.
Page after page we become part of that change of horizons and perspectives, we feel part of this “atypical” family but for this reason no less united and special, that knows how to open the doors of their home to friends and strangers passing through, becoming a sort of small shelter, warm and welcoming.
It is not a book properly about mountains, but it is precisely among those peaks, woods and meadows that the two protagonists gradually find their own dimension and put the scattered pieces of their lives in place. Spartan life, friends of few words but genuine, sincere and loyal, and long solitary walks become a real therapy of the soul.
Although the book investigates the relationship between a father and a son, in the novel there is the constant presence of Chiara, Leonardo’s wife who died years before. A silent voice, Chiara is pain that over time has turned into nostalgia, she accompanies Leonardo during his solitary walks, and in some ways is the engine of the whole story, because without her Martino would never have been part of this family, nor would the protagonists have never found their little corner of happiness.
I stood there a little longer to look at the now clear outline of the mountains circling all around, the jagged border line of our world. That distilled nostalgia in the pure state every time we moved away from it. To many that profile gave the idea of an oppressive, even hostile barrier. For us it constituted a succession of protections. We knew very well that it was enough to climb them to see boundless horizons and invent new paths. A privilege to share with those you love, or with those who, in harmony, share part of our path.*
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