Percival Everett
Deserto Americano

I'm writing to you from page 92, while Ted and his family, his wife Gloria, and their children Emily and Perry, hop into the minivan and, activating the control to open the garage door, leave the house, catching the TV crews and journalists guarding it by surprise.                                                             

They leave to do grocery shopping, they leave to break the siege. They use the minivan because the '78 Lancia Coupè was towed away, probably scrapped. After all, it must have been in rough shape after the collision with the UPS truck, the collision that hurled Theodore Street's body through the shattered windshield, propelling it along the interrupted trajectory of his own car. Incredibly, Ted's body came out practically unscathed, not even a scratch or a fracture. But his head was severed completely, ending up on the asphalt.

I leave Ted and his loved ones on page 93, among the supermarket aisles, amid the stares of incredulous and morbidly curious customers, as they attempt the impossible task of "acting normal" armed only with a shopping cart and their need to regain a condition lost forever. I leave Ted, his wife, and their children and exit the book before things get even more complicated, before knowing what will happen shortly, and tomorrow, and in the days to come, on these pages, traversed by the Sabon MT and Frutiger typefaces printed on Serica paper from the Germagnano paper mill. I exit to tell you I'll lend you this book no matter how it ends because in the way it starts, there's everything we need.

The beginning.
Theodore Street, aboard his Lancia, was heading to the sea. He was going into the sea, intending to swallow enough water to fill his lungs and cause death. But I already told you about the accident... The body, with the head tucked under one arm, then completed the journey to the morgue inside a bag, in the coroner's van. The two parts were finally reunited by a funeral home staff member, who carried out a rudimentary stitching along the neck with a blue fishing line. But on page 19, during the funeral ceremony, while the choir of the Sacred Blood of Christ of the Eternal Spirit church was humming a closed-mouth amen, Ted sat up from the coffin and shortly after jumped out of it, returning to the world.

I believe you can imagine what chains of thoughts this beginning generated in me: the cynical and mocking fate that interrupts a suicide to grant instant death, the ambiguous nature assumed by Ted after his bizarre resurrection - is he dead? But he's doing grocery shopping! So he's alive. But how could he be? He was decapitated, he doesn't breathe, he has no heartbeat! As I was saying, in the way it starts, there's, in my opinion, everything we need, but I also trust, considering these first 92 pages, in the quality of the writing and the author's ability to make the most of the opportunity offered by his own hand. Percival Everett's writing, so far, moves Ted's steps along the pages with precision and constant balance, allusive and ironic.                          

He himself, this prolific writer with an eclectic biography, was in some way one of the reasons why I bought the book. I liked, during the radio interview (you must have heard it, you who always listen to Radio Three) a certain laconicism in his answers. I then searched for information online and discovered, among other things, that:

1) Everett already has some fame even here at home (as usual, I'm always distracted)

2) they invented Booktrailers, so if you like the idea, you can take a look here.

But now I say goodbye, I have to return to page 93, I anticipate that the Street family's shopping will be rather eventful and, above all, that the real troubles are just beginning.

The book, published by Nutrimenti in November 2009, is from 2004. The translation is by Marco Rossari. Pages 263, 16 euros. But this last piece of information is superfluous to you, I've already told you that I'll lend it to you.

Goodbye, miss.