Anna Ferrari – författare

Small stories of ordinary people, to whom extraordinary events can happen (Free will, Macbeth: story of a madman), people who get lost in memories to find meaning in the present (The girl on the bus) or who still find nature in memories of human existence (Memories). A teacher (11th commandment: do not judge) and a mother (A mother) tell of daily life, with its pains and satisfactions, misunderstanding, but also the miracle of finding acceptance in the hearts of others. In What must happen ... it happens we find ourselves having to deal with the impossibility of predicting destiny and in Black & White life is observed from the point of view of our animals.The eight short stories in this collection are in the name of George Eliot''s thought contained in the epigraph: just as there are great personalities in the world, there are also ordinary people deserving as much attention. People like you, like me, like everyone. The opening story, Black and White, portrays the lives of two playmates who seem mismatched, a dog, White, and a cat, Black. In reality they are two wonderful beings who love, suffer, are grateful, spiteful, live unaware of the enormous gift they give to their human ”parents” simply by existing. The little girl on the bus has a slow start, then suddenly turns and goes back through the years, to when the protagonist was a child, to an episode that deeply marked her emotionally, whose memory is not so much visual as internal and affective. The very nature of this memory brings the narrative to very intimate levels, in which still unresolved traits of her personality are revealed. Free will is a gothic tale: a cursed mirror, the devil, wickedness as an end in itself, unbelieving victims. Everything happens without a reason, as if to say that evil exists and can dispose of human beings at will. Macbeth. Story of a madman is built in the footsteps of Shakespearean tragedy, it is set in the world of theater, the names of the main characters are the original ones, the manias, obsessions and distorted passion are the same as the mad regicide. After all, the fantastic has an important part in Macbeth: the three witches enunciate prophecies that will make the brave soldier mad. Even in the story, the fantastic folds to itself the destinies of the protagonists who play their lives on the most futile of human feelings: ambition as an end in itself. Memories is a delicate journey in the narrator''s mind, in a moment of solitude, in which she gets lost in thoughts that are unrelated to each other, which nevertheless have a common theme: the nature of memories and how much of ourselves is a matter to remember. A bit of melancholy, but also of sustained hope and vivacity of thought underlie the inner confession, in which it is not difficult to identify. 11th commandment: do not judge tells the world of school with disillusionment: misunderstanding, jealousy of one''s role, indulgence towards parents and students, today the ”clients”, break the balance of a good teacher who is also a nun. Such are the sadness, the disappointment that the protagonist suffers that these feelings empathically penetrate the reader, and their power is equal to the abandonment of hope in a better world. Not all stories, like life, can have a happy ending. A mother introduces a note of joy. A common school interview becomes an opportunity for mutual growth between the mother and the teacher. Two women with a strong and combative character, surprised by the unusually confidential tone that the conversation assumes, together try to find a way to convey safety and serenity to the people they love and who are experiencing a moment of confusion. The mother understands how to measure herself against her own limits, and consequently the teacher becomes fully aware of the dozens of individuals in a class, of which she often knows very little, but which each have their own moods. The teacher warns that the presence of the school should manifest itself precisely i

At first I only wrote these notes for myself. It was a difficult moment in my life, I was reborn after a period of darkness, where I had lost contact with reality to the point that I could no longer think or read, an activity that was, and is, the cornerstone of my life: I did not decipher the symbols on the page, they had lost their meaning, I did not remember, everything had been swallowed in the womb of suffering, and the more I tried, the more I failed, to the point of being terrified of picking up a book; every day the malaise plunged me deeper. It was chilling, sad, tormenting. Then I met a specialist who, like a good fairy, brought me back to the surface with love and intelligence; the first thing I did as soon as I felt better was reading. To prove to myself that my head was working again, at the end of each novel I wrote, at first with desperation, then with increasing pleasure, my comments to see if I could finally understand and remember what I was reading. I have two whole thick chunks of these comments, written straight away, with no other concern than talking to myself and reassuring myself.I was and am an avid reader, I have worked with books all my life, for this reason death and rebirth have passed through words. A few years after that period, I reread those comments and found in them both hasty, almost anxious writings, and others more stimulating. Over time, they revealed an inherent power to me; commenting on those books, I commented on myself, the myself that was found now in this, now in that story or novel. It is in this perspective that the analyzes contained in A book to heal are special: they are not the usual reading advice, perhaps thrown down for editorial needs, they are much more, they are confessions and therefore sincere appreciation or slashing of those books that have marked my path to healing. This exceptional character of theirs reveals to the reader a good book to read, and also marks the path that can be taken in difficult moments of life, because we are what we say, and what we read penetrates our depths and remains there until it gives its fruits that nourish the hope and the desire to succeed. Anyone therefore can retrace my path, and later can also add his own. In this way A book to heal was born, whose origin is therefore an act of love, and the words that compose it were written with love. Even the title gradually arose from the feelings I felt in reworking these texts, and I immediately adopted it as soon as it appeared. Inside the volume you will find a section in English, the result of another birth. A bit like everyone else, different personalities coexist within me: Anna, the writer, the Teacher, and so on. A few years ago another one was born: Aileen, who thinks, speaks and writes in English. In this capacity the writing becomes freer somehow, protecting Aileen''s feelings and fears with a foreign language. Antonia S. Byatt, Jane Austen, Clarice Lispector, Nicola Lagioia are some of the authors I speak of, each of them has delicately shown me an unusual and surprising aspect of life, they have made me learn that life never ends, but it is always a harbinger of surprises and revelations. In conclusion, that phase of my life, which gave me A book to heal, taught me that nothing more than a book can give us back the love for ourselves and for the world, nothing more than a book helps us to build. our way and therefore our life.