Lorenza Ghinelli
Il Divoratore

LA RECENSIONE

Don’t look at it, Don’t search for it. If you believe in it, He sees you.

A book for brave kids or for childlike adults? An intriguing title, it promises strong emotions, horrific images: The Devourer.

A noir? A thriller? A horror? A fairy tale for little mischief-makers? It’s a bit of this and a bit of that, but nothing that places it in a specific genre.

The impression while reading is like watching a movie: the written frames flash past quickly and the reported voices with their unreal intonations send chills down your spine. The plot cannot be recounted, not because it would spoil the reading for others, but simply because everyone would tell it differently...

Just a hint about the characters: Filippo, Francesco, Luca, Dario. And especially Pietro. It’s April 15, 2006, 4:00 PM. This is the first paragraph of Chapter One. Teenagers, friends(?), gang leader, malice: Pietro is a fourteen-year-old autistic boy with Asperger's syndrome, who will suffer the fury of the gang!

March 1986, Chapter Two. Denny back then was only seven years old: a mother addicted to psychotropic drugs and an alcoholic father, a painter. Lots of solitude, abuse, and gratuitous cruelty from his schoolmates; he defends himself the only way he knows how: by inventing scary rhymes... which he shares with the Man of Dreams, a painting given to him by his father.

Nine chapters in which attempts are made to explain the disappearance of the boys: the only help is in the eyes and hands of Pietro.

What possibly strikes the most is the Rimini of the suburbs, of social discomfort, and of a childhood increasingly defenseless and misunderstood.

Someone commented: ... it will be the literary sensation of the year, but it is frightening, very frightening...