Se Arianna

Arianna, 19 years old, is a seriously brain-damaged young girl. Her mother, father and two brothers recount everyday life with her.

Arrianna, affected by a serious disability, is the pivot around which rotates the life of the whole family, consisting of her mother and father, both neurologists, and a younger sister and brother.  The four voices alternate and tell the story of their family life from a very different perspective, composing a complete picture of what really means living with Arianna.

Anna, the mother, has the most hard and clear vision on the meaning of Arianna’s life. She reveals her feelings regarding such a terrible tragedy, her sense of guilt and inadequacy; she tells about the reaction of the society and the absurd and dramatic situations she has to cope with everyday.

David, the father, (who is also the son of the famous philosopher Luigi Pareysn), as a neurologist tries to understand if some feelings, sensations, tastes still subsist behind Arianna’s impenetrability, giving a sense to all the efforts his family is doing to make Arianna happy. He is looking for the person beyond the wall, if there is one.

Alice, 16 years old, and Daniele, almost 12, tell about the relationship with their older sister; a particular relationship that is made of love, jealousy (because Arianna the center of their parents’ attention), envy of her privileges as eternal child, and natural disgust for Arianna’s physicality.

Each chapter is a symphony of all four voices, an intense sequence that alternates deep thoughts, strong feelings, dramatic moments, comical and grotesque situations, in prose that avoids the censure of the politically correct.

Reading one page, you’ll cry. Reading the next one, you’ll laugh; but the reader never stops to questionm the meaning and value of human life.

Anna Visciani, mother and wife, lives in Milan with her family. She used to be a neuro-radiologist but she is now a housewife, having quit her job after the birth of Arianna. This is her first book.

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