At Rocca d’Arce, time seems to stand still, but only those who do not listen to silence can truly believe it. In the novel La feminanza (Editrice Nord) by Antonella Mollicone, that silence is an open door: you only have to come closer to hear the voices of women who have passed through a century, with the light and stubborn steps of those who carried the world without claiming it. It’s a story born inside the elegant and slightly tired building that is the Maletazzi, and then spread out into the streets where life is a mixture of misery and pride, suspended nights and mornings that smell of smoke and spun wool.
Camilla was the first to come out of the shadows. He was young, but his youth seemed to be filled with pain that no one wanted to mention. The house he lives in is a well-guarded secret theater, and he is a silent spectator. When Peppina the midwife introduces him to the Cerchia, a community of women who live together to protect themselves from the secret violence of men, which dampens the world’s divisions. There are no titles, assets, or memberships in the Circle. There are women. A woman who recognizes herself in hand signals, in stifled sighs, in ancient knowledge that flows like a thin thread between one generation and another. “If you are used to being kind and polite in every situation, at a certain point being kind becomes an obstacle. Then with your voice you appreciate even a stone, with your heart you look down on the whole world.
It was there that Camilla found balance, her medicine. She discovers that femininity is not a role, but rather a shared breath, a way of being in the world without asking permission. The story touches on the story of his daughter Viola, who grew up amidst ruins and reconstruction, in an Italy that was changing too quickly. Viola is a girl who wants everything: learning, freedom, love. But love, sometimes, displays itself in holding hands instead of caressing. He faltered. He seeks a path that does not reduce himself to being a spectator of other people’s lives. And even when history strikes this country with the brutality of fascism, with the echoes of the bombing of Montecassino, with the horror of the Moroccan attacks, Cerchia remains a place of invisible resistance, a halo against the fury of time.
Antonella Mollicone builds a family saga that has the power of a story that grows from the bottom, like grass breaking up asphalt. No rhetoric. There is the rhythm of daily body movements, the wisdom of ritual, the fragility that is a source of pride. Femininity here is a legacy that is not passed on in words but through skin: in potions, in whispered stories, in small rebellions that change destiny. This is a novel that resembles a chorus.
Each voice has its own tone, but they all intertwine and say the same thing: that true love, love that knows no fear, is love that liberates. And in history, even when things seemed to be falling apart, there was always a Circle ready to mend the torn lives.
