Synopsis

In this novel, various stories intersect: neighbors, pets, a psychoanalyst, a cleaning lady, carpets, bookshelves, and all the tranquility of bourgeois life. A tranquility that works almost like a drug, numbing and addictive. Margherita, for example. When she married, her husband seemed like the perfect man, strong and successful. Only now does she realize her failure, living with a stranger, unloving and incapable of empathy to the point of cruelty. Then comes a destabilizing twist, not only for the reader but for her as well. And her life splits in two. Failure becomes tangible, biological. The bourgeois family becomes a monster that traps her with its mechanisms of chilling normality. But Margherita will be the warning light, the mouth that screams, the finger that points. She will dig into normality as one digs into earth, getting her hands dirty. And she will discover that the monster is real, flesh and blood, and the family is merely its lair. And what about the others? What are the lives of others like? Margherita looks at her neighbors whose newborn child has just died and wonders how they can bear so much pain. But this is a book about overcoming grief. It captures the protagonists at the moment of choice: to remain still on the edge of the abyss, contemplating the catastrophe, or to move forward. It is not a reasoned choice; rather, it is a drive for life that belongs to all animals, plants, and organisms.