Fiction
The Practice of Parting
by Mary Barbara Tolusso
Description
There are three of them: Emma, David, and her. They live in a boarding school, a few steps from a border immersed in woods and wind. We feel the weight of history, a Trieste that is never named, but that permeates the pages. Far from their parents, these teenagers grow up educated in order and in controlling their passions. Theirs is an exclusive triangle: an easy friendship with the exuberant Emma, a seductive competition with David, the boy with the sharp heart. The three love each other with the unreserved impulse of adolescence and with the terror of abandoning themselves to true love.
As long as they grow up within the protected walls of the school, life passes comfortably between study, sport, and walks on the park’s paths, under thin oak branches and watchful eyes. They do not ask themselves too much about their future, nor why their education is designed to face endless fates. They don’t imagine that their lives, once so intertwined, will be divided. Years later, only a photograph remains to connect them, as well as the mystery of their infinitely long and healthy existence. Almost nothing is left of the great friendship with Emma, of the love for David, or of the passion for Nicholas, the young anarchist encountered over the border. And yet they cannot help but chase that lost time, asking: what were they destined for, what becomes of their privilege in a world where the exclusive are ultimately excluded?
The Practice of Parting is above all a remarkable love story written in unique prose, mournful and steeped in poetry. A visionary novel that exposes the most terrible of human desires—what drives us to dream of a longer existence, of eternal love. It’s impossible not to think of Ishiguro. It’s impossible not to think, at the same time, that we are confronted with a unique voice, which will linger in the reader’s heart.
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Reviews
«Tolusso excels in depicting an institution that reminds us of the colleges described by Musil and Walser, or of the atmosphere in Fleur Jeaggy’s novel Sweet Days of Discipline; she has distinctive originality that shows through a sharp, crisp style and peculiar passages in the narrative. The novel assumes dystopian features, like a lot of today’s most interesting fiction, but most of all it is an exploration of desire that breaks the rules, crosses boundaries at its own risk and challenges the inevitability of time.»
Helena Janeczek, winner of Premio Strega 2018, Tuttolibri, La Stampa
«There is a time when love and friendship are unconditional and life seems infinite. That is adolescence. You need to detach from it in order to live and face your own fragility and the shortcoming of dreams and feelings. If you wish to avoid that, death is the only option.»
D di Repubblica
«L’esercizio del distacco is a novel that deserves credit and attention because it tells a brief story with care and precision; although concise, it manages to cover some of the nightmares of our times, allowing the reader to let them go.»
Il manifesto
«At the center of L’esercizio del distacco (…) there is a message that gathers strength not only from its content but also from its varied and insistent repetition. The result verges more on the lyrical rather than the fictional, and is made effective by the genre-contamination technique that the author has mastered: when she writes poetry, she hints at profiles and storylines; when she writes in prose, she slows the pace or cuts off the narrative with a continuous lyrical variation of few and well defined patterns. Undeniably, Mary B. Tolusso is highly readable in both styles: her poetry touches glamorous themes and her prose is built with a precise rhythm that soon becomes vivid, identifiable and enthralling. The vibe is elegant and modern, with sophistication reserved only for witty remarks: “We were a generation of sophisticated prisoners lining up at the showers or at the cafeteria, with plenty of rules and plenty of future”. »
La Lettura – Il Corriere della Sera
«An elegant, poetic and powerful novel, that speaks to the reader with subtle vibrations (…) in a happy balance, the style is smooth yet endearingly restless, with lyrical nuances.»
La Stampa (Tuttolibri)
«Emma, David and the main character share an indissoluble bond that carries the absolute certainty of adolescence. But adolescence is ruthless, and that connection is bound to fade away like everything else in this novel, because the feelings that prevail in boarding school are not carefreeness, camaraderie and happiness, but an awareness of the end, of a repressed longing that will never translate into eternity.»
Il Giornale
Author Biography
Mary Barbara Tolusso was born in Pordenone. A greatly admired poet, this is her second novel.
TM.Literary Agency
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View all titlesBibliographic Information
- Publisher Bollati Boringhieri
- Orginal LanguageItalian
- ISBN/Identifier 9788833929774
- Publication Country or regionItaly
- FormatHardback
- Primary Price 13.90 EUR
- Pages174
- Publish StatusPublished
- Original Language TitleL’esercizio del distacco
- Edition3 may 2018
- Copyright Year2018
- Page size14x21 (14x21) cm
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