Journalism meets fiction in this novel about Italian schools at their breaking point. Emma, a special education teacher from Naples, takes a temporary post at an art school in Turin—a chance she cannot refuse, even if it means leaving her city overnight. The book asks hard questions and renders painful truths about a world few are equipped to navigate.
In Turin she meets skeptical colleagues who mistrust her southern roots and underestimate her because she is a woman. Her training in special education echoes through her mind, a rulebook for handling difficult students—until she meets Andrea. He is autistic, with psychotic features, and he unravels her certainties faster than she can rebuild them.
The novel captures school inclusion in all its genuine complexity: the preparation teachers need, their relationship with mainstream faculty, their place in the classroom ecosystem. The prose is contemporary, sometimes demanding, but it avoids sentimentality and false optimism. Whole sections treat parents with real dignity, acknowledging their pain while never looking away from the fragility and chaos of ordinary life. Some passages are truly significant in their refusal to pretend that integration solves anything.
C.T., 2012