Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
2019
«Born around the same time as we were, democracy and the Constitution told us that we all had the right to do whatever we liked. The whole society, conniving to protect our wishes and desires, was in agreement. We were going to be what we wanted to be, and they were constantly asking us what we wanted to be when we were grownup».
In this choral novel, narrated in first-person plural, the characters share something more than the voice that speaks in all their names: they live in a single symbolic space, that of a generation not yet lost but gone astray because of waiting for a sign that would indicate the decisive moment to do the job or make the decision that would give sense to their lives. Maturity has brought to these accidental emulators of Beckett’s burlesque characters an awareness that nobody is going to give them this sign, that nobody expects anything of them. If they have some opportunity to give purpose to their lives, perhaps it is to live them for themselves alone, in other words, simply act without an audience.