Maria Vittoria Masserotti
Maria Vittoria Masserotti is the author of this novel, “CasaMarina”. Maria Vittoria Masserotti was my friend. Maria Vittoria Masserotti died on 12 March 2015.
It is always difficult to talk about the book of a person we know because objectivity is unattainable. There is always added interest, we are very intrigued to see how much of the friend is present in the text: her biography, her habits, her tastes, her way of expressing herself, the places she describes. Here is the aggravating circumstance of death, sudden, cruel, very recent. I will try, as far as I can, to overcome the filter of pain, of familiarity, and put myself in a detached perspective.
I followed the whole narrative path of the author. She had devoted herself relatively recently to writing, soon the act of writing had become a reason for life for her. If her Facebook profile had not been deleted, I could report her exact words, with which over and over again, even in amiable contradiction with me, she expressed the ineluctability of her need to communicate through the written word.
I read her first novel, “Luce” and her two collections of short stories, “Cose” and “Stories for a song”, but shortly before she died she told me that she considered “CasaMarina” the book, the one that is written in life one time. Unfortunately it was her spiritual testament and only saw the light a few months before her disappearance.
The plot revolves around three generations of women: Cosima, the grandmother, Clara, the daughter and Lilly, the granddaughter. The historical period includes fascism and two world wars, but history, even if it is the engine of fundamental events — such as the death of Clara in the Resistance and the bombing of Villa Marina — in reality remains in the background. What matters, as often happens in female life, is Love, with a capital L, understood as the author intended it, that is, romantic, ecstatic, absolute, violent and enthralling at all ages, a love that is even difficult to understand, because tantric and philosophical.
“I don’t understand but I feel. I feel in my soul that whatever happens, I am in eternity. “
This love is expressed in three female figures. Cosima is the absolute protagonist, the whole story is influenced by her, she is the strong woman, the housekeeper of CasaMarina, that is the seaside villa of a rich family from Florence. Cosima towers from the first to the last page, she remains alive in the memories and genes of…