Synopsis

Reggio Calabria, early 1980s. Sixteen-year-old Lucia Carbone, a high school student, kidnaps a classmate and imprisons him in the basement of her grandmother's house, who died a few months earlier. The boy, Rosario Cristallo, is the son of an Aspromonte crime boss, and Lucia kidnapped him for two good (or bad) reasons: the first is that her best friend is in love with him and wants to keep him away from her; the second is that Rosario might know something about the murder of a beloved aunt. While she visits her prisoner every day, Lucia's life apparently continues as usual: at home—with her father, mother, and little brother Gedo—in the neighborhood, and at school, where Lucia falls in love with Carmine, a boy from the upper-class neighborhood. Meanwhile, Reggio, a wounded city emerging from the first 'Ndrangheta war, is the scene of clashes between the Youth Front and the Student Collective: there is a sort of widespread violence, which takes different paths. And violence is also present in Lucia's everyday gestures, and in things, such as that red knife she finds in her hands when she descends into the underworld, where her secret lies. Until everything is turned upside down, above and below blur like all opposites, and she makes an unexpected decision. In the Dark I Can See It I is a novel that builds a universe little by little, with strength, coherence, and a stunning imagination, full of frame-worthy pages, like those in which a mother and daughter fold sheets, calibrating their gestures in a sort of Western duel. And it is also a book about justice and the South, far removed from all clichés: when she uses dialect (always sparingly), it is never for a colorful effect but to grope for the only possible meaning. Because dialect can be used "to shield or to clarify; it is the language of grown-ups, it works both ways." And food is above all an instrument of power and control: "If I feed you, you're safe, and you're mine."