The happiness of others

Clotilde has lived a complicated life and her past is full of ghosts that assail her, spirits that return to the surface, bringing unhealed wounds to light. After a childhood marked by the tragic death of her brother Emmanuel – which she blames on her mother – she grows up in the Home of the Timid, a shelter home on a hill run by Madame and the General. She lives there until she reaches adulthood, when decides to go off and discover the world. Years later, Chloe moves to Venice, where she begins studying art and meets Professor T, who teaches the aesthetics of shadows. She finds great affinity in his words and in the end the two get to know each other, walking silently through the alleyways and squares of Venice, as kindred spirits who see their own darkness reflected in the other. A melancholic, nostalgic novel, which attempts to reconstruct the life of the protagonist, starting from fragments of her memories, as if restoring a temple that has been shattered by a catastrophe with the original materials – an anastylosis, as the protagonist declares in the opening pages of the book, in which she uses a language filled with references to Greek antiquity to narrate this modern, shattered tragedy.

La felicità degli altri
Carmen Pellegrino
La Nave di Teseo, 2021