Defining the book as a bildungsroman would be excessive, absolutely irreverent towards Salinger, despite an infinitesimal, intentional, reference to Holden. However, it is true that it wants to be, in its small, very small intent, a novel of growth. A growth that sees a group of young people confront on the one hand with the approach of the final exams, on the other with a collective commitment and on yet another one with a situation greater than them, violent and brutal. The commitment that involves them is basically a small thing, a play, but it is enriched with an organizational and design context that motivates and excites them. It helps to unite them, to cement existing bonds and to create new ones. The violent story arises from a simple stunt, which however unleashes mechanisms of revenge, evil instincts and deplorable actions. Football cheering is the excuse for such feats.
And around these three lines of development are intertwined the stories of individual young people, stories of ingenuity, love, sympathy, friendship, affection and solidarity. Positive stories in fact, deliberately such, innocent perhaps. But these are precisely stories of growth, of maturation, which the acceleration of events eventually makes even dramatic.
The setting is that of the late eighties, to place a detachment from the present time, but feelings and passions are of all times. Like the steps of life.
Targeted Age Group:: All age
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
It's a novel of growth. After almost 30 years in the ITC business, now I am a math & physics teacher, so I decided to write about school, young people, friendship, affection and solidarity.
How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
More or less looking at young boys and girls in my classes at school.
Book Sample
Professor Tonini had brought some piles of papers, arranged neatly on the desk, had gone over to the blackboard and had written in large, clear letters, in capital letters, WEIRD PEOPLE.
– This is the title of the play that we will stage, which you will stage, to put it better. A one-act play, as I have already said, written by a friend of mine a few years ago, when he was part of an amateur theatre company. Apart from that I like it, in its simplicity and irony, it is short enough not to be excessively demanding, it lends itself to an easy representation and at the same time allows you to put into practice, stimulate and focus all those collateral skills I was talking about, which our school does not cover in its curricular programs. Therefore, not only the creative, playful and amateur aspect, but a collective work, as a crew, as a team as business people say, with defined tasks and roles, with a planning approach aimed at the success of the undertaking, in terms of staging, audience and economic return. Yes, even profitability, since I obtained from the headmaster that all the profits from the initiative are made available to the class to finance the organization of your party for the last hundred days till high school end.
(…)
– The main characters are three. – Professor Tonini went on, after a smile of complicity addressed to Camilla. – Two gentlemen and a young lady, defined as an intellectual, customers of a tea room. After all, they are the first guys to be weird. The first gentleman tells of having witnessed in a park the scene of a boy intent on hanging a grasshopper with a string, noticing the intervention of a man who, instead of getting upset and reproaching the boy, watches the scene very interested, carefully examines grasshopper, perfects the knot and walks away satisfied when the victim no longer moves. The story is initially addressed to the second gentleman and then to the intellectual young lady, with the aim of having a comment, an interpretation, a deplore, regarding the man’s behaviour. Instead, the second gentleman, a former perfectionist accountant sadistically passionate in researching and reporting the errors made by other accountants, underlines the clear professionalism shown in his action, in the face of which he believes that ethical considerations disappear. On the other hand, the intellectual young lady, university professor of otolaryngology, the medical discipline that deals with problems related to the ears, nose and throat, detects and appreciates in man a scientific, experimental intent, whose motivation in his opinion justifies everything, makes everything lawful.
– But these guys are crazy! – Camilla entered again. – Really certifiable. No one in their right mind would ever think of justifications such as professionalism and science in the face of a shameful act like the hanging of a poor grasshopper.
– I obviously agree with you, Camilla. – Emphasized professor Tonini. – And this is obviously also the opinion, the aim, the moral, of the friend of mine who wrote the one-act play, who with great irony wants to underline the strangeness of human behaviour. Oddities that see their completion in the epilogue, in which the first gentleman confesses that he himself likes to hang grasshoppers. But he says that then he gets remorse and tries to submit to others the problem that arises in his conscience, proposing the false story of the child and the man in order not to expose himself in the first person. Basically he would like a cathartic disapproval, but instead he collects twisted and bizarre justifications for his action.
Links to Purchase Print Books
Link to Buy A walking shadow Print Edition at Amazon
Links to Purchase eBooks
Link To Buy A walking shadow On Amazon
Author Bio:
Luigi Arcari is 62 years old and was born in Italy. He graduated in nuclear engineering and worked for almost 30 years in the ITC business. He is a physics teacher since 2015. He is passionate about literature. In 2018 he published his first short stories’ book entitled “Un diverso punto di vista”, followed in 2019 by “Ibridizzazioni” and 2020 by “Il labirinto e altri racconti”. “A walking shadow” is his first novel book, the English translation of “Un’ombra che cammina” in 2021.
