Synopsis

This is the story of two brothers and the summer that will forever mark their lives. Diego, Olmo, and their grandfather are in the mountains, in the cabin their parents bought before they died. The hope is that those places will bring serenity to the soul of Diego, the eternally restless older brother. But as soon as the wind picks up, the chairlifts shake and the clouds cast deep shadows over the valleys. Only Olmo understands that Diego is slipping into a universe beyond his reach, a delirium that seems to grow until it reaches the sky. And he would give everything he has to save it. In engineering, we talk about allowable stress: the maximum stress a building can be subjected to before it collapses. The Empire State Building, for example, survived the impact of a B-25 bomber. Day after day, Olmo builds the model of the Empire State: with infinite patience, aware that the building's strength lies in the placement of each individual brick. But what tension is permissible for a family, for the love that holds people together? "I imagined my characters as giants," the author wrote. "Diego is a giant incapable of making his world suffice, who dreams of scaling mountains and conquering the sky. But above all, Olmo and his grandfather are giants. Giants are those who look pain in the face without excuses. Who accept pain for which there is no consolation." In his first attempt, Emanuele Altissimo writes a novel that is stark yet charged with emotion, and features characters in slow, free-fall, like snowflakes. The wind, the clearings, the proud profile of a deer, the thin air of the mountain peaks: everything in these pages is as vast and mysterious as the human soul, capable of saving a sliver of light even in the darkest night.