Federica Orsida
La nostra storia

LA RECENSIONE

Federica Orsida is a writer of "popular fiction", of those novels that achieve wide dissemination but lack the qualities codified by the most established aesthetic conventions. The spread of popular fiction is due to the growth of a readership not educated according to traditional models of literary training, consisting of readers more attracted to the narrated stories than to given aesthetic suggestions.

"Our Story" by Federica Orsida is a work of "popular literature." "Popular literature" would indicate - wrote the historian and literary critic Giuseppe Petronio - "the phenomenon [...] whereby elements of content and elements of form (themes, characters, narrative patterns, language, stylistic elements) spread, become trivialized, turn into matters of custom and fashion, lose intensity and tension, are constructed in series, in industrial ways."

Like all works of popular fiction, "Our Story" is a work aimed at achieving a purpose that is not to rise to the condition of art, but rather to meet the tastes of consumers. Traditionally, popular literature is stylistically associated with simplicity of writing and its functionality to the plot. For "Our Story," for example, syntax has been sacrificed on the altar of dull content; the vocabulary used is limited; complex periods are not found in the work and language serves solely as a vehicle for the narrative. Factors not directly related to the succession of actions and intertwining of events (digressions, psychological introspections, formal decorations, descriptions, etc.) and which would further burden the work, making it indigestible to a good portion of readers, have been almost ignored. Given the neglect of characterizations, the characters in the story are stereotypical and defined based on very general elements.