Stefano Benni
Saltatempo

THE REVIEW

Many clocks tick and tock inside the belly and the optimistic need to see the facts and the future with a fantasy clock. Lupetto, or if you like: Saltatempo. Firmly rooted in the communist origins of his father and the drunken and extremely reckless friends, as is usual in the town at the bar: he crosses paths with '68, the strikes, and the transformation of Italy.

He experiences the death of a friend who fell during the drug boom that even reached there, the transformation of the woods where he used to pick wild strawberries and sleep with his girlfriend in the city and streets, the humor in renting rooms and finding himself in a relationship with two sisters and their mother, escaping and hoping not to encounter the grandmother, urinating with gnomes in the woods talking about current events... he manages to muster strength and look to the future while keeping to himself.

A true Latin lover who "Suffered like Othello, or like an idiot", a true boy of the '50s who dreamed of freedom, but not too much "Freedom, said Baruch, is a mushroom you have to taste, you can't know beforehand whether it's good or not. And I didn’t know which of my two clocks would tick louder. I didn't even know anymore if I was young or old. A young man who will die at twenty, at eighteen is already old."