First published 2024
Valeria Cossati sits in her Roman apartment, surrounded by the trappings of middle-class respectability. She has a husband, two children, and all the markers of bourgeois success in postwar Italy. Yet something feels wrong. When she begins writing in a small black notebook that she hides in her closet, Valeria starts to see her life clearly for the first time. Her secret writing reveals how her marriage, her role as mother, and her social obligations have slowly erased her sense of self. The notebook becomes her refuge and her rebellion. As she examines her relationships more honestly, the careful facade of the Cossati family begins to crack. Her newfound self-awareness creates friction with her husband and children. The conflicts that were always simmering beneath the surface now threaten to destroy everything she has built. Valeria must choose between the safety of her old life and the dangerous possibility of becoming herself.
Genres: literary-fiction, domestic-fiction, 20th-century, contemporary, adult-fiction, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: character-study, introspective, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Rome
Period: Postwar
259 pages · Paperback · Astra House
Content warnings: depression, mental-illness