Author:
Valeria Usala
Publisher:
Garzanti
Date of publication:
02-06-2026
At number 78 Via Geras, a young woman stops in front of a building that preserves the memory of a stubborn elegance. In her small cream-coloured Moleskine notebook, she jots down details that still catch the eye: the wrought-iron door, weighed down by the years; the golden handle, smoothed by generations of hands, in which a weary glow still lingers. Everything else has given way discreetly: the plaster is flaking at the corners, fine cracks silently criss-cross the walls. Like the building, the lives of the tenants too seem to hang on by a thread, in a fragile and stubborn balance. On the first floor lives Luciano, who in life has been faithful only to crossword puzzles and Lucky Strikes. Now he divides his days between remorse and Pepito the Indian blackbirs, the only one who still speaks to him. Opposite live Aldo and Nora, who have shared a whole lifetime and now share the weariness of time. On the floor above is Ugo, a grumpy watchmaker, capable of repairing any mechanism, yet helpless when it is
something within people that breaks. Further up, a sequence of closed doors, behind which other old ages are being lived out. They barely cross paths, and yet someone, over the years, has come to know them better than they could
ever imagine. It is the girl with the little white notebook: she alone holds what remains of those forgotten lives.