Synopsis

Clementina counts the stains on the ceiling and talks to imaginary cats, Porno has a folder on her office desktop called "lifeline" filled with porn films, Pusher relies on books, Flavia heals with stones, and Clara—well, Clara, at thirty, is stuck at university without a sure thing. They all live in adoration of Electra, who has left but first seduced them one by one. In Rome in the early 2000s, they are all searching for "something fundamental," something that will save them from meaningless meetings, precarious housing, fleeting love affairs, a project, the project of a lifetime. When Clara finds a pile of paintings with a single subject—the vagina—in her recently deceased father's attic, Clementina thinks she's found a gold mine to invest, but to do so she'll have to devise a plan, overcome Clara's resistance, and win her friends over. In a story that makes no concessions to the small daily miseries and the great aspirations destined to fail, Carla Fiorentino in her debut novel describes a group of Peter Pans terrified of responsibility, stranded on sofas waiting for the big opportunity to escape from themselves.