COME DIVENTARE ANNA KARENINA (SENZA FINIRE SOTTO UN TRENO)

The story of a lighthearted sentimental and literary education, with a self-deprecating, a bit naive and romantic protagonist. A charming original novel that celebrates love of great literature.

Eleonora was one of those little girls who write poems about clouds and bucolic short stories. But then she became a melancholic adult, stuck in the quiet and monotonous life of her provincial home-town. At thirty-two, she feels confined by a grey boring job and a dull marriage: she has worked so hard not to be touched by grief that she has ended up feeling nothing clearly. After the death of her father, she decides to attend a creative writing workshop, giving space to that childhood dream and to new possibilities. The encounter with a small group of fellow students and with a talented teacher (a good-looking actor), along with the readings and performance exercises she is given week after week - climbing over a red rope, diving into freezing water, climbing a tree, to name just a few examples - will lead her to an unexpected but ultimately much desired metamorphosis. Together with new companions, who "really love writing" but never actually write (a great cast of characters), she will start copying the habits of the great authors of the past, and those of their characters. From Flaubert to Tolstoy, from Mary Shelley to Virginia Woolf, from Dumas to Conan Doyle. Getting inspiration from Kafka's diaries, following the life of RL Stevenson through a set of wonderful photos taken in the Samoa Islands, reading Virginia Woolf and of her "room of one's own," or comparing the habits of Flaubert and Emma Bovary or those of Tolstoy and Anna Karenina. Learning in fact not to be afraid of ghosts, to desire, to keep secrets and to reveal them at the right moment, to confidently take new paths. Eleonora Sottili cheerfully dialogues with great classics, out of a shared passion, curiosity and wonder for literature, telling the joyful story of a young woman's path of self-discovery. Eleonora Sottili was born in Tuscany and works at the Scuola Holden in Turin. She has published two previous novels Se tu fossi neve (Giunti, 2015) and Senti che vento (Einaudi, 2020).