Their names are Euterpe, Thalia, Melpomene, Terpsichore, and Urania. They bear the names of the Muses, but to Cecilia, a somewhat clumsy twenty-two-year-old history student, they are simply the aunts and the mother she has always lived with.
Cecilia is a girl with a hearing aid that’s been raised in a house populated solely by women (now elderly and afflicted by Alzheimer’s), surrounded by the scent of homemade pasta, the sisters’ stories and squabbles, and their sometimes-stifling love. Only Euterpe had refused to move in with them, choosing instead to remain in the family home. She was the eldest, and the first to pass away. Yet, she left her niece a task to find Lorenzo, the little brother who had vanished without a trace in 1945. And so, for the first time in her life, Cecilia sets out to find the uncle she never knew she had.
She is not alone; helping her is Giada, her lifelong companion, along with new friends including a generous café owner and his daughter, a young municipal archivist, a police inspector with a passion for literature, a young priest, and an elderly nun. Amidst old papers, faded photographs, and hazy memories, Cecilia begins to dig. It is a journey into memory—personal, familial, and collective—as well as a battle against the disease that erases those very memories. She will discover many things: about her family’s past and the history of a city, but above all, about herself and the importance of not forgetting.
Rights sold:
Russia (Mann, Ivanov and Ferber)
Turkey (Yakamoz Kitap Yayýncýlýk)
