After all, life is this: days stolen from death, as many as possible, as beautiful as possible. Ada D’Adamo in her short life has been many things, even a dancer as a girl. You have worked in the theatre, for a long time with Mario Martone, and in publishing houses. She was the person everyone trusted, for accuracy, intelligence and grace. She was Alfredo’s wife and Daria’s mother, who inherited Ada’s smile. “You are Daria. You are of air. The apostrophe transforms you into a light and impalpable substance. In your name a destiny that does not make you an earthly creature, because you have never known the force of gravity that calls you to earth”. Ada died tonight, but she left us this book, “Come d’aria”, which I fell in love with from the very first reading. And not just me. Loretta Santini wanted it immediately for her publishing house, Elliot, and the Strega Award jurors accepted it into the dozen. A book that will still make a very long journey, will meet readers, will remain in our memory.
I wish I could describe it, but its strength is precisely the voice that Ada d’Adamo gave it. When I try to tell it I always find myself saying the same thing: read it. Because this book, like all books by great writers, is not made up of what it tells, but of that voice I was saying. The voice of an angry, irreducible mother who madly loves her magical child but never loses sight of reason, never forgets the pain. A mother who at a certain point of this journey in fatigue – between hospitals, treatments, the rudeness of certain doctors and the sensitivity of others, a journey in which she, Alfredo and Daria are alone, disoriented, very tired – falls ill at her own time. And even the description of this new ordeal that overwhelms her meets the same criteria: lucidity and love. Because this is how Ada d’Adamo writes, under the sign of these two divinities: lucidity and love.
His intelligence seeks, inquires, speaks, builds and destroys, his heart welcomes, keeps warm, embraces. When the book, thanks to the sensitivity of the publisher, came out quickly because there was no time to waste, what all of us, the privileged readers of the manuscript, already knew, happened. But we didn’t even talk to each other: all the readers, all those who didn’t let themselves be frightened by the intensity of the theme, recognized it as a book of extraordinary quality. Extraordinary in the literal sense: out of the ordinary. There is no page, there is no sentence in this book that does not overwhelm by strength and pietas, but above all by immense literary knowledge. The work on the incandescence of history is that of a miniaturist, who doesn’t miss an adjective, a verb, nothing slips out of the jurisdiction of literature in this book. Which is also a long letter to her daughter, and ends like this: “Will I end up dissolving in you? I’m Ada. I will be Of air…». And once again the most sensible thing you can say is: read it. It is the gift that Ada d’Adamo left us, and it is an immense gift.