Marta, Croitoreasa

With subtle vibrations and impressionist touches, Valentina Di Cesare leads her reader, in this first novel of hers, into a world of secular epiphanies, where "the revelation (...) of the visible spirit of Beauty - and of nature, I would add - is stimulated by the play of memory" (U. Eco) and by the immanence of the aesthetic sense, as in Proust and Joyce, leading to a personalized opening of the present, like a fan with unique patterns on each of the palettes his. Exceptional by her naturalness and by her ability to perceive (just like the impressionists) realities, in order to then metabolize and reactualize them, Marta, the seamstress, carries within herself and with her the entire universe of the book, the diascope that will unfold the destinies that fill her life and animate her. Through her, the narrator will impose the rhythm, filter the impressions, mediate the expressions, in order to bring her out of hiding, forbidding her, through the voice of Lidia, one of the episodic characters, towards the end, the secret: "Your secret does not exist, just as there is no other human thing that cannot be discovered by someone". Marta is her own world, revealed by the inner dialogue, transposed by the narrative voice in the third person, without actually breaking it from the character's consciousness. The dexterity with which she uses this technique reveals the writing mastery of Valentina Di Cesare, captured and excellently translated by the translator Carmen Făgeţeanu, who is also making her publishing debut. Gabriel Nedelea