Who Speaks and Who is Silent

In the seventies, Vittoria moves to Scauri, on the Lazio-Campania border. She arrives with Mara, a woman much younger than her. The rumours fly in the villages, covering every possibility: maybe it’s her adopted daughter, maybe she was kidnapped. Many things are spoken, many left silent. Vittoria is generous and affable, perhaps a little unusual; she has opened a boarding place for pets and is on good terms with everyone, but she never talks about her life. Twenty years after she arrives in Scauri, she is found dead in the bathtub and the episode is accepted as a tragic domestic accident. Lea Russo is a lawyer, a friend of Vittoria, who doesn’t resign herself to this explanation and wants to excavate the past to understand who this woman was and if it was really just misfortune. She will find herself in front of a difficult and unexpected experience, which will also push her to question herself, her relationship with her friend and what her life could have been – a multi-layered investigation, which will also lead her to discover the environment she lives in, people’s prejudices, changes in the village. Chiara Valerio’s latest novel is structured like a provincial detective story, but it transcends its genre, becoming a book that talks about love and possession, identity and changes, written with a fluid language, which plays with words and subverts rules.  

Chi dice e chi tace
Chiara Valerio
Sellerio, 2024