Terradimandorla, “Divento di vento”

A collection of very well written, very literary stories. They range from science fiction to the dreamlike, passing through the surreal. Illustrated with decomposed, almost liquid drawings in pastel colours. Terradimandorla, pseudonym of Cristina Basile, an expat author hovering between France and Sicily, writes and paints them.

Women (but not only) protagonists of stories that are difficult to tell, transfiguring and transfigured, where an alteration is taking place. Change doesn’t even scare us anymore since it is inevitable, we let ourselves go to its disorganizing action, we become “wind”, in turn bearers of mutation.

Stories that are also raw, excruciating, hard to digest, told as if nothing had happened, without apparent pathos but with a lot of underlying tension. Orphaned girls, missing fathers, violent men, current events. Characters and plots that start in one way and reveal themselves to be completely different, time that flows in alienating leaps, places that take on archetypal meanings, such as the Fontanelle cemetery in Naples or the tuna fishery in Favignana. The simplest, most everyday events, such as being a babysitter or wearing a dress with a bow, take on fantastic meanings, delve into the unconscious, transform into concepts which are understandable more with intuition than with reason, imbued with repressed sexuality or violence. They…