Hi girls and boys! How are you?
Today I speak of a novel that I finished reading not long ago: “In front of my eyes”. I came to know about this novel through Facebook, following the author Roberto Emanuelli and his wonderful phrases.
“In front of the eyes” is a novel about love. The protagonist is Luca, a thirty year old who after a degree in Modern Literature and the dream of becoming a writer, has decided to put everything aside for a future that he thought was more profitable and safer and thus becoming an insurance broker. However every day the creative soul is put aside or only limited to a few lines written in his red notebook, so the character is poised between the concrete and the abstract:
“It’s just that sometimes I need to believe that the world, the world that I look at, what I have around me, what I have inside … Here, I need to believe that I’m not really going to hell as it seems. I need to think that certain moments do not exist solely to fill in the gaps, to make us feel less alone, or less bored, or more special. I need to make sense of things, and to believe that I can still trust my instincts, my heart and my feelings.”
Then when all seems lost, Mery arrives, a woman who makes him lose his head, difficult to conquer. Luca dedicates words full of love to her, a feeling that seems to become overwhelming in some places. He is a fixed point for him, a safe haven.
“We are only for a few for this, because we no longer allow anyone to look inside, to touch our hearts with dirty hands, to discover our frailties like nothing. To peek into our emotions like a game.”
The plot is almost essential compared to the more articulate prose focused on the protagonist’s feelings. Furthermore the novel follows a musical rhythm, each chapter begins with a song.
“You’re a bitch in every way possible. But I love you. Because I know what’s behind the part everyone sees. I went further, looked where no one wants to look. That fragile and wonderful side. The one full of veins. I caressed him, I listened to him. I know what you have inside. I know it…”.
When then Luca stops to reason and write in his notebook his words reach the best reflections:
“Sometimes, the image imprinted in the mirror is only a reflection of what we need to see. And then you will want to run away and run as fast as you never did, but at some point, exhausted, you will have to stop and, turning around, you will realize that all that pain and all that love are still there, mixed and confused one in the other, cling to your heart.”
The phrase I love most is where we talk about the future:
“In this group journey that we are doing, in search of happiness, we delude ourselves that we know where we are going, and how we are going there. We plan, we book, we calculate … Ah … All useless! The truth is that it has nothing to do with really wanting it, let alone getting there ”.
But even this is no joke:
“If there is one thing that really taught me therapy is that knowing how to lose is the true secret of life. You must have the courage to lose, if you don’t want to lose yourself forever. I did not have this courage, not always, and I knew that I would pay for my cowardice, for certain choices, and above all for certain non-certain: my silent deafening non-actions. When you don’t follow your heart you betray yourself, you fuck. Here is a true traitor: who fucks himself.”
Although the book is very introspective, reading is smooth and absolutely exciting.
Highly recommended book!
