“I asked Eileen to remove all the mirrors. I used to like them, but not anymore. Mirrors are too sincere, and a woman can only accept the truth so much.” And so Veronica McCreedy will have all the mirrors moved to the back room, where Eileen, the woman who takes care of the house and who bears his reproaches with affectionate resignation, “in her great wisdom” keeps everything because.
It is from that room that a wooden box with a combination lock is taken. It will be the opening of that padlock, together with the television series of documentaries dedicated to penguins, which will set Veronica’s elderly but always efficient neurons in motion, causing her to make a series of decisions that will take her to the other side of the world.
But the most challenging journey will be the one she will do inside herself, helped by the penguins and Terry. It will be so that not only will Veronica finally be able to cry, but when she returns she will no longer ask Eileen to close all the doors.
We recommend this novel, not only because the interludes represented by Terry’s blog on penguins narrate a lot of these birds that are characterized by truly original habits, but because the narration itself becomes a sort of sounder of how and how much the contact with wild natural environments can represent for us technological animals the context in which to find ourselves.
Publisher: Newton Compton Publishers, 2021
Pages: 352, Hardcover | EAN:9788822758422
Hazel Prior è un’arpista professionista, autrice di quattro romanzi. Away with the Penguins, magistralmente tradotto in italiano da Paola Vitale e intitolato L’incredibile viaggio della novantenne salvata dai pinguini, è il suo secondo romanzo, scelto da Richard & Judy Book Club nel 2020 come bestseller numero uno.
La sua tecnica narrativa ci fa scoprire la vita e l’anima della protagonista in modo originale: quel che a prima vista sembra un romanzo leggero, durante la narrazione assume uno spessore insospettato, in cui l’ironia dei personaggi e della stessa autrice aiutano a sdrammatizzare fatti e accadimenti in grado di spezzare la vita di chiunque. Veronica, invece, resisterà e il contatto con una natura incontaminata e i pinguini di Adelia riusciranno finalmente a dare armonia alla sua difficile vita.
Hazel Prior is a professional harpist, and author of four novels. Away with the Penguins, masterfully translated into Italian by Paola Vitale and entitled The incredible journey of the ninety-year-old saved by the penguins, is her second novel, chosen by Richard & Judy Book Club in 2020 as the number one bestseller.
Her narrative technique allows us to discover the life and soul of the protagonist in an original way: what at first sight seems like a light novel, later on, takes on an unsuspected depth, in which the irony of the characters and of the author herself help to play down facts and events that might break anyone’s life. Veronica, on the other hand, will resist and finally, the contact with an unspoiled nature and Adelia’s penguins will finally bring harmony to her difficult life.
Credits
Author: Anna Lacci is a scientific popularizer and expert in environmental education and sustainability and in territory teaching. She is the author of documentaries and naturalistic books, notebooks and interdisciplinary teaching aids, and multimedia information materials.
Translation by Maria Antonietta Sessa
