THE SEA IN WINTER

From an established author whose previous works have been well-known and popular mysteries, both in Italy and abroad, comes a new topic: women at a very specific time in their lives and the friendships that they form. This is literature about, by and for women, with intelligence…

The Sea in Winter is a novel about friendship between women, a kind of feminine ‘Big Chill’, with the irony of a work by Pedro Almodovar. The story is told by Agnes: she is a teacher, her marriage is on the rocks, and she has an 18-year-old daughter. Then there is Vera, a successful journalist, and Carmen, an actress who dubs films. They are all nearing fifty and they have been friends since college. Vera left their hometown Modena for Rome, and Carmen for Milan. Agnes, instead, did not move to the city, and years before published a novel with a small publisher but without much success. Now the three find themselves together in a house on a desolate beach on the coast of Emilia Romagna, in the days just before New Year’s Eve. The excuse is that they are there to console Carmen who has fled to reflect once again on her most recent sentimental problems. In that semi-deserted place, cold, with the hotels closed, and ‘the sea in winter’ (from the song by Ruggeri), the three women consolidate their friendship via fleeting arguments, memories that return, shared secrets, regrets, and loves they have not forgotten. But above all they laugh, or they learn how to laugh, at an age in which they are not yet old, but no longer young. Vera, even though she is the most professionally accomplished of the three, is not happy, and neither is Carmen who has always put love before everything else. Agnes, instead, must decide about her marriage. A short holiday in which they will learn more about themselves, and will have the chance to meet men who are feeling the same melancholy ‘off-season’ sensation in their lives, too. And maybe, in the end, these women will find the strength to move forward more consciously, with their inner lives and their external lives, in moments between solitude and companionship.

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