Lies, secrets and mysteries. Families who live in hypocrisy and conformity are not always able to always remain quiet in their riverbed. Now, Alessandra Villasco Damiani begins with a novel «Tulips at breakfast» (Sperling & Kupfer), aimed at emphasizing family unhappiness. The author tries her hand at a successful genre, the love novel, but treats it as a tale of adventure and great challenges.
Masks and fictions belong to others, but Beatrice, father and mother are frank and transparent in their feelings. The father, testifying to the admiration he has for his daughter, nicknamed her Eta, in honor of the star Eta Carinae, one of the brightest in the Milky Way. But it is the tragedy that disrupts their lives. Beatrice is only twelve years old when a terrible event changes her existence. The father, the driver Furlan, who is an ace of the tricolor Frecce, crashes to the ground in Rivolto in Friuli Venezia Giulia. After a year, without any warning and apparent motivation, her mother decides to abandon the reference points that Beatrice has managed to build to overcome the loss of her beloved father. He announces his transfer to Rome to his daughter. Thus Beatrice loses the few certainties she has built with difficulty, including her relationship with the boy she is in love with, Alessandro. In fact, he met a kind of soul mate who can fill the void left by the sudden death of his father. The story takes place partly on the Ligurian Riviera, in the comfortable and not at all sleepy routine of the rich province, in Rome and subsequently in international scenarios from Dubai to London and Paris. Beatrice will become very independent, with a super-luxury job that satisfies her and forces her to travel around the world. Despite being a confident woman and satisfied with her autonomy, the love for the teenager who captured her as a young girl remains vivid until she meets the boy again by chance during a vacation and he promises to give her tulips for breakfast every morning. .
But the book, like a Dumas-esque adventure novel, is full of twists and turns. As chance has destroyed Beatrice’s life, in the same way it is always the hand of the Goddess Fortuna, understood as the unexpected, that faces and changes the fate. The young woman is not completely satisfied with her golden solitude amidst airports, luxury dinners, five-star hotels and wardrobes that are the envy of even Megan Markle, who notoriously spends and spreads in clothing. Finally the surprise. Beatrice seems to have found hers where I stand in the relationship with Javier, a beautiful Spanish businessman when, in fact, the hand of fate changes the cards on the table. It is a diary found on the plane that undermines his bond with Javier. And the story has a new beginning. This debut of Villasco Damiani stands out because while practicing a genre like the romance novel, she innovates it with the adventures of a modern picaro, Beatrice who listens to the reasons of the heart.