The human being, with his ambitions and meanness, fears and weaknesses, dreams and falls, but above all with his ability to start over, is the fulcrum of You live well in two by Giorgio Scerbanenco, writer born in Kiev but Friulian by adoption since 1964, when he moved from Milan with his family to Lignano Sabbiadoro.
80 years after its first release, the novel has recently been republished by La nave di Teseo. Neither pink nor yellow, perhaps already noir, the plot is strongly characterized by a social analysis of a Milan in transition, no longer nineteenth-century and popular not yet a rich modern metropolis, anticipates the famous and fortunate by almost twenty years cycle that the writer wrote in Friuli starring the former doctor-investigator Duca Lamberti.
Refined engraver of a narrative that is always controlled in defining characters and descriptions of environments, Scerbanenco with elegant precision never redundant typeset the scents and colors of streets and neighborhoods, in a counterpoint of the atmospheres of furnishings and environments of modest houses and sparkling clubs in the center and sumptuous apartments of the rich bourgeoisie. Social classes whose lives are intertwined out of love, interests or pure cynicism.
Central character of the novel Cesare Vairaghi, a young Milanese employee with Roman parentage, melancholic and restless, meek and apparently weak, loved by many women, characteristics that recall the biographical references of the author, who dreams of abandoning his meager salary and modest pension in which he lives to aim for sails bent towards the high seas represented by the world of books.
Cesare loves reading and great authors and is convinced that the Milanese work during the day and read in the evening. This is why he is determined to open a bookshop all his own.
In the realization of this dream he will be supported by women who love him now with a feeling now faithful and total without asking anything in return except to be reciprocated, now capricious and overbearing, in a game of conquest and domination through the power of wealth.
Feminine archetypes linked to the historical period, but contemporary in the psychological and sentimental connotations of their universality: Benedetta, the fiancée, a good girl to marry born in a family context that gives relevance to culture and to asking questions without ambiguity. Cristina reserved and with a mysterious personality never completely revealed.
And again Marta, a colleague in the office, poor in wealth and depth who aims to make her way through seduction. In stark contrast to these female figures, Candida appears, a rich and fatal woman, engrossed by Caesar to demonstrate to herself and others her empire even in sentimental relationships, supported in the cruel game by the cynical Arturo, representation of the anaffective gaga, lover only of goods materials.
In perfect Scerbanenco style, noir emerges from crimes that in this novel are crimes and wickedness of the soul, without bloodshed, perpetrated by the human being or consequent to a chain of actions: the reader is called to investigate them, to understand and reveal them.