Paolo Ciufici
Ga(y)o

Yes, Ga(y)o is a gay novel. I am gay and I like to read, OK? Not just gay literature, though. Ga(y)o (too long from now on I will write it "Gayo"!) I liked because... You know when you listen to music that seems like you've heard it before, and you like it, you feel at home, you are comfortable in it (I don't mean to say it's clichéd and already seen and reviewed, quite the contrary)? Because everything is laid out there: the ingredients of the story, the emotions it tells and asks you to participate in, but without using tricks and low blows, the disarming simplicity of telling a life story that is not simple at all. Gayo is a story written with natural devotion/devoted naturalness, simple because it is believed, and proposed because it is important: "same old story," gay boy from the suburbs, school, university, relationships with parents, sex love betrayal, dark premonitions serenity conquered piece by piece, living and being oneself... But it works, precisely because it is important, it is meaningful, it is simple. It is and remains itself (like its author). It reminds me of an early 20th-century rhapsody, with its recurring themes, the rhythm that transports, that mounts grows darkens returns luminous, rhythm colored by the pure colors of friendship love and death, colors that produce unexpected tones. I like Gayo because it is not clichéd, despite being a simple story; it works, because it doesn't appeal to what a reader would want to find at the end of the cycles it consists of; it is beautiful, because once the listening is over, it leaves you serene and full of soft, yet concrete echoes (I would like to say, but I can't, that it is made of solid bricks, but light bricks, which do not enclose the reader in a suffocating and uncomfortable building). The final chords are held fading, inventing once again (but it is not a flaw) the theme of young life in formation that bursts in where there should be dismay and despair (it’s one of Ciufici's best inventions, but I won't spoil to what I am referring). Gayo ends but continues, it doesn't use the usual happy ending and doesn't impose its viewpoint on the world and its grid of values; it proposes it, doesn't impose it. I'm glad I read it.