White as Milk, Red as Blood is a coming-of-age novel. Leo, the
novel's main character, only accepts his real name, Leonardo, at the end of the book. But he
goes even further: the account of his last school year is in the form of a diary that the reader is
invited to browse through to delve into his intimate and secret world. Thus, we discover that Leo is a
teenager like any other: he has complexes, he loves music and sports, he's in love...

His relationship with the world develops through colors, which he associates with feelings. His
sensorial universe turns life into a kind of painting. But there's nothing abstract or distant about this:
behind the colors, the reader discerns the passions, the visceral strength that animates the protagonist.
Like any education, his too passes through pain—the pain of love, of loss, the
pain of giving meaning to suffering.

Through her eyes, the reader can see or rediscover the difficulties of being young, in love, yet
faced with the tragedy of illness.
The author thus gives voice to youth, which uses poetry and literature with simplicity to
tell its story and, above all, to find itself.

White as milk, red as blood is full of emotions, questions, and attempted answers that
could help us on our journey through life.

“This is what I wanted to tell: the courageous journey of a sixteen-year-old, deaf to reality, who
opens himself to it through love, at the cost of dismay, pain, and failure, until he generates
the unique pearl that he is, but not without the help of the adults he couldn't even see before.”
Alessandro d'Avenia.

This novel is a coming-of-age story: it's the story of a school year in which the narrator, Leo,
learns to become a man, learns what life is.
Leonardo, Leo in the story, is a sixteen-year-old boy like many others: he goes to school with other teenagers, has
a great friend, Niko, with whom he plays music, plays PlayStation, compares himself to Johnny Depp, Zac
Efron, Spider-Man, and Bart Simpson... Leo seems to have a normal life as a growing teenager. But
his life is different from others when it comes to love. In fact, Leo loves a girl,
Beatrice, white as milk, red as blood. This girl has green eyes, red hair, and
something other girls don't have: leukemia. Thus, the school year described in the story
becomes the account of the chaos of a teenager who gradually understands that life is stronger
than death, what pain and love mean.

Leo has great inner strength and a strong character. Moreover, if he wants others to call him
"Leo," it's because he feels the strength of a lion within himself. But he loses his strength when he sees something white:
silence is white, Beatrice's illness is white, death is white... White is the absence of
feeling or sensation. Leo feels a white void without Beatrice: "A single being is missing and
everything is empty" Lamartine, Poetic Meditations. But Leo finds his strength again when he sees
something red, because red is the color of courage, of Beatrice's hair, of love, of
blood, of Leo's blood, which is not full of white. For the love of Beatrice, Leo wants to give her his
blood, he wants to give her his courage. So, to be closer to her, he breaks his arm and goes to the
hospital. He wants to grow back with Beatrice little by little, for Beatrice to grow back without her illness. But
life is not a red page or a white page: it is a mixture of colors, like Beatrice. With
her leukemia, Beatrice is a mixture of white luikos and blood aima, a mixture of red
and white, of yin and yang. She can then make Leo understand what life is. Therefore, this is a
coming-of-age novel and it is also an adventure that the narrator describes to his reader. We can
see Beatrice as a poetic figure, like Dante's Beatrice, who allows the poet to have the
strength to live and become a man. Faced with the pain of losing Beatrice, Leo has become
a man.

Furthermore, in the story, Leo parallels his love story with another friend who is
Beatrice's opposite: her name is Silvia. Silvia is blue, she is peace, she is a haven, she is home. Silvia is Leo's blue future,
without white clouds. After Beatrice's death, Leo will be able to love Silvia, not as an adolescent but
as an adult.

The story, in the present tense, takes the form of an intimate diary. The reader then becomes a
curious observer who makes his own judgment on Leo's behavior. The questions are brief and
give the impression of a written record of the conversation: the narrator records the tics of language...
He seems to be speaking to his reader. It is precisely this blurred boundary between sender and receiver that
allows the reader to be touched by Leo's story, to feel sorry for him, and to reflect on this
question: must we, in order to grow and be adults, experience pain? Is pain a
necessary step in each person's development, or can we live without suffering?
Regarding love, it seems that the happiness of being loved doesn't exist without confronting oneself
, one's own weaknesses. Perhaps suffering is a way to grow spiritually and become
better.