I have read beautiful and noble criticisms of Sandra Newman’s novel The Heavens and yet there are areas of shadow in this book that have made it difficult for me. The dream theme is not simple. For those who write and those who read. Create a surreal ambivalence that must please. A self-contained paronarmal romance published by Ponte delle Grazie (pages 256, € 16.80) that climbs a path that sometimes seems too difficult.
Always, every night, Kate dreams of being Emilia, a musician and poet of Italian origin in England in the late sixteenth century. His dreams spin a continuous plot, which becomes more and more real. Threatened by the plague that arrives in London, tormented by the omen of a burnt and destroyed city, Emilia decides to save the world. Every decision he makes will influence his life and that of Ben in the world of 2000. And that of a young and unknown poet: William Shakespeare.
We know Kate in a New York populated by singular characters, it is at a party that she meets Ben. During the day Kate has a life, then at night she becomes Emilia through her dreams. The story, the descriptions of this passage have the brilliance of a “strange” pen, in a good but true sense, strange as strange is Kate with her double night life, her wonderful madness. The bond between Kate and Emilia will become stronger and stronger, yet despite the twists and turns, it is a book that has struggled to read and conclude. Why? The beauty of the style is perhaps its greatest brake. It is not always fluid, it requires a distance of understanding that freezes the identification. Cover beautiful, but to be read only if you want to experiment and are fascinated by the genre.
