The Night Still Scares You
In Milan, just after the unification of Italy, the cat Aida obsessively contemplates the stars and perceives dark omens; she is not able to give them a sense, but she feels that the skein of her existence has just begun to unravel: after her death, her soul embarks a journey that will cross continents and a century of history, with the constant of the peach-colored cage of her being a woman.
This is how we will meet Mabel who, in the Victorian London, chases an ideal of beauty that merges with sacrifice; the young Lian who, in the fatigue of the rice fields, will be forced to modify her body according the dictates of the Chinese culture; the prostitute Madeleine who opposes male abuse of power, in the Paris of the 1920s; the little Fenan who is injured and abused in that part of Africa occupied by Italian fascist in 1936; Amy who meets her true self in the McCarthyist America of the 1950s; and finally Carmen, the strong-willed Napolitan who, during the protests of 1968, wonders if the price to pay in order to be loved isn’t ultimately the renunciation of oneself and one’s dreams.
The Night Still Scares You, Fosca Navarra's debut novel, enchants for the skill with which she handles words: her fresh voice, but still full of surprising classical melodies, immerses the reader in the lives of the seven protagonists who, despite belonging to different and distant lands and eras, find each other in an individual and collective memory: they experience the burden of being a woman which has been attempted to be domesticated, through every means and since the world began, because otherwise potentially free, disruptive and dangerous.
Press reviews
Ermanno Paccagnini - la Lettura - Corriere della Sera
Figure raccontate con grande delicatezza, per ognuna delle quali l'autrice ricorre a immagini, parole, toni, similitudini, linguaggio, costruzioni di un mondo ogni volta differente, calibrati con effi...Leggi
Tudor Carlin - Eroica Fenice
La notte fa ancora paura è già di per sé una dichiarazione politica. La “notte” diventa metafora dell’oscurità in cui troppo spesso la condizione femminile è relegata e che troppe donne durante la sto...Leggi
Lettura.it
Con una scrittura poetica e visionaria, la poetessa Fosca Navarra, intreccia destini al femminile che sfidano mentalità retrive e sistemi oppressivi.Leggi
La Fionda
"La notte fa ancora paura" è scritto con lo stile impeccabile dei classici, penso a Laclos, Proust e a Malombra di Fogazzaro, in una postura semantica incredibilmente matura, nonostante la sua giovane...Leggi
Valeria Zangaro - Rivista Blam
Un romanzo di voci, musicale, carico di simbolismo, sulla memoria, l’eredità di certe sofferenze e la forza femminile.Leggi