Maria Vittoria Masserotti, "CasaMarina"

Maria Vittoria Masserotti is the author of this novel, “CasaMarina”. Maria Vittoria Masserotti was my friend. Maria Vittoria Masserotti died on 12 March 2015.

It is always difficult to talk about the book of a person we know because objectivity is unattainable. There is always added interest, we are very intrigued to see how much of the friend is present in the text: her biography, her habits, her tastes, her way of expressing herself, the places she describes. Here is the aggravating circumstance of death, sudden, cruel, very recent. I will try, as far as I can, to overcome the filter of pain, of familiarity, and put myself in a detached perspective.

I followed the whole narrative path of the author. She had devoted herself relatively recently to writing, soon the act of writing had become a reason for life for her. If her Facebook profile had not been deleted, I could report her exact words, with which over and over again, even in amiable contradiction with me, she expressed the ineluctability of her need to communicate through the written word.

I read her first novel, “Luce” and her two collections of short stories, “Cose” and “Stories for a song”, but shortly before she died she told me that she considered “CasaMarina” the book, the one that is written in life one time. Unfortunately it was her spiritual testament and only saw the light a few months before her disappearance.

The plot revolves around three generations of women: Cosima, the grandmother, Clara, the daughter and Lilly, the granddaughter. The historical period includes fascism and two world wars, but history, even if it is the engine of fundamental events — such as the death of Clara in the Resistance and the bombing of Villa Marina — in reality remains in the background. What matters, as often happens in female life, is Love, with a capital L, understood as the author intended it, that is, romantic, ecstatic, absolute, violent and enthralling at all ages, a love that is even difficult to understand, because tantric and philosophical.

“I don’t understand but I feel. I feel in my soul that whatever happens, I am in eternity. “

This love is expressed in three female figures. Cosima is the absolute protagonist, the whole story is influenced by her, she is the strong woman, the housekeeper of CasaMarina, that is the seaside villa of a rich family from Florence. Cosima towers from the first to the last page, she remains alive in the memories and genes of subsequent generations. Clara is her daughter, a little crushed in history between grandmother and granddaughter, passionate and rebel, she enlists among the partisans and is killed. Lilly, the niece, is the most autobiographical character.

They are three, they have different characters, but love is the same and, paradoxically, it is more important than the men who provoke it. The males, although distinct and characterized, nevertheless remain in the background. It is a love declined on three personalities and three events, which gives dizziness of rapture and intoxication but also depths of pain.

“I flounder. I can’t swim in the sea of ​​his absence. I don’t know this pain that spreads in spite of me. (…) I look at the world that has no reason to be without him. I lost the colors, the reality is black and white. Everything comes muffled or with unprecedented violence. I am skinned, even the flight of a butterfly hurts me. “

Without love “colors are lost”, the flavor and taste of life are lost. But it goes on, for better or worse, the depression is set aside and reality has the upper hand again. It is this being strong, it is this being a woman.

There is another protagonist, perhaps the main one, Casa Marina. Place of the heart, which will be abandoned only on the last page but, in reality, always carried with us. It is an abandonment steeped in roots, memory, the past. Casa Marina is a villa hidden among the oaks of Castiglioncello, with the descent to the sea, the staircase that leads to the “pungenti”, that is the local rocks. It is the theater of life, love, work, games, passions and diving in the waves. It is impregnated with the smell of resinous bark and brackish, it is wet from the splashes, it is lapped by the surf. We see the frames change quickly before our eyes: clothes, car models, characters. Time passes rapidly but the House remains, even after it has been destroyed, because it is, as we said, a place of the soul, a nucleus that holds personalities and affections together.

The novel alternates omniscient narration with some chapters where the focus shifts within, which are also, in my opinion, the best, the ones written with the most original attitude. However, the contrast between the two styles does not clash but, on the contrary, gives depth.

There are some defects, in my opinion, in the structure of the story, because certain parts should be developed more and some interesting ideas (such as the intertwining of Cosima’s offspring, forced by convenience to recognize the ex-husband’s son instead of her own little girl) are just hints then abandoned. If in real life things happen by chance or by accumulation, in fictional fiction there can be no blind alleys and everything must have its own reason to exist.

But what draws and moves is not the plot, is not the style, nor the passion told with modest and reserved tones, but rather the atmosphere you breathe. No writing school can teach the atmosphere, either it is there or it isn’t, or you infuse it with talent, or what you produce has no vital breath. “CasaMarina” has an atmosphere: strong-willed young women, with skirts and hair shaken by the sea wind, luxury cars, pots boiling on the fireplace, children playing, lace, shawls, letters. But also chilblains, candles, bread, bombs, vans, partisans.

And now, let me take off the role of reviewer and rejoin those of a friend. Many times I have reproached Maria Vittoria, whom the friends called Mavie, for indulging too much in autobiography. Who knows if she even thought a little about my words when she chose the epigraph: “a matter of paper that I’m tracing brevi manu from who knows what inner indecency.” The last chapter gives chills, not so much for the story it tells, but because Lilly — the 65-year-old who decides to move away from CasaMarina to fully experience that love of heart and senses denied to her mother and grandmother — is frighteningly similar to the image of Maria Vittoria, of her great thirst for life, of her adherence to life. In the end, Lilly chooses to drag her roots behind her and, at the same time, to get rid of them, challenging moralism, the constraints of age, the tangle of those who would like you to be different from who you are. It is very sad to think that that happy ending, that fullness always hoped for and perhaps reached only in flashes, can never be realized again.

“Now, here and now, Lilly feels full of possibilities again, a world opens up before her, unknown. She no longer remembers her age, she is timeless, she clearly perceives only her body resting carelessly on the train seats and she knows she is alive, she knows she vibrates to the sound of new music. “