They have in common Elba, the books of Federico Regini “Island” and Elena Maestrini “The Islands of Lu ‘” , both published by Edizioni The Sheet , which will be presented at Marciana Marina Friday 5 August at 9.30 pm for the cycle “BOOKS AT THE TOWER: MEETING THE AUTHORS” interviewed by the journalist Patrizia Lupi . The meeting will be held at the headquarters of the Pro Loco, in Piazzale Bernotti , just below the “ Torre di Marciana ”, emblem of the country.
The stories, set in Elba and in the Archipelago, which refer in a fictional way to some episodes of island life, but which above all tell the island, the relationship of its inhabitants with the rock, what could be defined “isolitude ”, The desire to leave and to return, the intertwining makes full seasons and empty winters, between beauty and abandonment, between horizons and mountains, between tourists and residents.
In the volume of Elena Maestrini “The Islands of Lu ‘” the protagonist is Lu’, a tenacious journalist, inspired by the figure of Luana Rovini , journalist of Il Tirreno, passed away in 2009, aged only 47. Three other main characters move around her. The man of the whales, in the grip of a painful disenchantment with the world; Francisco, a young archaeologist with not always crystalline intentions; Camilla, the social climber who regrets the simplicity of her life as a young girl.
Space is represented by the Tuscan Archipelago, with its apparently motionless, beautiful and sleeping islands. But Lu’s pen manages to bring out evident facts and hidden intentions. Twists, twists, stories, between historical reconstructions and characters that move in the ideal city of Cosmopoli where the link between man and nature seems to crack and recompose. The love, adulterous between Francisco and Camilla and tormented between Lu ‘and the man of the whales, adds humanity to this story of women, men and catastrophes.
“ L’Isola” by Federico Regini tells the Elba and its social dynamics through characters who seem real, and probably partly I am, interpreting the “Elban type” with an imaginative but restless character, adventurous on one side but permanent and tenaciously attached to the “rock” on the other, dynamic and “awake”, but lazy and a little indolent. Which lives at two speeds depending on the season. The novel is set in the late nineties and Emilio Terrini has to deal with a resigned mother, an absent father, a bulky brother and a transgressive youth. Emilio finds two shoulders to stand on: Alfio, a longtime banker and friend, obsessed with management in the race for the sale of financial products, and Muzio, a professional musician but … “without a profession”, who plays in Switzerland and maintains himself with the summer rents of some inherited apartments. The three friends live adventures between politics, finance and crooks, between riffs and swindles, returning an ironic picture of today’s Italian society with its vices and obsessions.
GLI AUTORI
ELENA MAESTRINI
Elena Maestrini was born in Portoferraio, Elba Island, she graduated in Modern Literature at the University of Pisa. She teaches Literature in lower secondary school. In 2016 she published her first novel Ultimo Banco, em> with the publishing house Il Foglio. Em>
In 2002 he began to collaborate with the first online newspaper on the island of Elba, Elbareport . In 2005 she became a freelance journalist and has a collaboration contract with the newspaper Il Tirreno.
FEDERICO REGINI
Born in 1971, he lives and “survives” on Elba, working as a banker at a branch of the Livorno savings bank. He has written numerous short stories and theatrical scripts for the company “Mukke Pazze”. After “L’isola”, published in March 2006 which saw 4 reissues, the collection “Dreams and surroundings” was released in 2009: seven stories written between 1992 and 2008, each accompanied by an illustration drawn by Marco Zorzan. In 2017 the volume “Mistosch. Intimate nocturnal dialogues between islanders ”. They are intimate dialogues, where the protagonists report lives of dignity and values, of an intense love for the island, an Elba different from the current one, forgotten, an Elba waiting for someone to cover its soul. A dream journey that will lead the reader to discover what an islander can be, an islander in the soul.