A Book To Heal by Anna Ferrari

At first I only wrote these notes for myself. It was a difficult moment in my life, I was reborn after a period of darkness, where I had lost contact with reality to the point that I could no longer think or read, an activity that was, and is, the cornerstone of my life: I did not decipher the symbols on the page, they had lost their meaning, I did not remember, everything had been swallowed in the womb of suffering, and the more I tried, the more I failed, to the point of being terrified of picking up a book; every day the malaise plunged me deeper. It was chilling, sad, tormenting. Then I met a specialist who, like a good fairy, brought me back to the surface with love and intelligence; the first thing I did as soon as I felt better was reading. To prove to myself that my head was working again, at the end of each novel I wrote, at first with desperation, then with increasing pleasure, my comments to see if I could finally understand and remember what I was reading. I have two whole thick chunks of these comments, written straight away, with no other concern than talking to myself and reassuring myself.I was and am an avid reader, I have worked with books all my life, for this reason death and rebirth have passed through words. A few years after that period, I reread those comments and found in them both hasty, almost anxious writings, and others more stimulating. Over time, they revealed an inherent power to me; commenting on those books, I commented on myself, the myself that was found now in this, now in that story or novel. It is in this perspective that the analyzes contained in A book to heal are special: they are not the usual reading advice, perhaps thrown down for editorial needs, they are much more, they are confessions and therefore sincere appreciation or slashing of those books that have marked my path to healing. This exceptional character of theirs reveals to the reader a good book to read, and also marks the path that can be taken in difficult moments of life, because we are what we say, and what we read penetrates our depths and remains there until it gives its fruits that nourish the hope and the desire to succeed. Anyone therefore can retrace my path, and later can also add his own. In this way A book to heal was born, whose origin is therefore an act of love, and the words that compose it were written with love. Even the title gradually arose from the feelings I felt in reworking these texts, and I immediately adopted it as soon as it appeared. Inside the volume you will find a section in English, the result of another birth. A bit like everyone else, different personalities coexist within me: Anna, the writer, the Teacher, and so on. A few years ago another one was born: Aileen, who thinks, speaks and writes in English. In this capacity the writing becomes freer somehow, protecting Aileen's feelings and fears with a foreign language. Antonia S. Byatt, Jane Austen, Clarice Lispector, Nicola Lagioia are some of the authors I speak of, each of them has delicately shown me an unusual and surprising aspect of life, they have made me learn that life never ends, but it is always a harbinger of surprises and revelations. In conclusion, that phase of my life, which gave me A book to heal, taught me that nothing more than a book can give us back the love for ourselves and for the world, nothing more than a book helps us to build. our way and therefore our life.