Synopsis

When the employment office offers her the job of waitress and reader for an elderly philosophy professor who has lost his sight, Maria Vittoria accepts without a second thought. Her marriage is standing "like a little hut made of toothpicks," and everything around her seems to suggest she's reached the end of the line. The Professor welcomes her into his windy, light-filled home, and it doesn't take long for a genuine relationship to blossom between them, at times comical and biting, at others tender and affectionate, and complicit. With the same joyful yet gruff Livorno manner, Maria Vittoria cooks zucchini and reads to him from Pascal, Epictetus, Spinoza, St. Augustine, and Epicurus. The Professor always knows how to find the truths of great thinkers in small household chores, and Maria Vittoria discovers that philosophy can be useful in everyday life. For her, every reading becomes a tool for bringing into focus things that until then had seemed confusing and picking up the pieces of a life spent pandering to others. All around is Livorno, with its market, the Mascagni terrace and Villa Fabbricotti, the churches overlooking the sea. And a whirlwind of characters: the Professor's highly cultured friends, his daughter Elisa, the fearsome Vally, his control-freak sister-in-law, Signora Favilla constantly searching for a cat that reminds her of her ex-husband, the former students who come to visit for endless discussions. And then Angelo, but that's a separate story. Little by little, Maria Vittoria and the Professor will teach each other a great deal, helping each other on their opposing journeys: one toward life and the other—as the order of things dictates—toward death. Without too much fuss, once we've closed the book, we naturally realize that the Professor's lesson takes root within all of us: we can always start over from the books we love, even when everything around us tells us otherwise.