Nothing but fog, the review

Nothing but fog

Why do we get passionate about the great thrillers? Because the reader is involved in the discovery of a mystery, often also linked to the identity of a murderer. And the writer's job consists in narrating, helping the reader - who has found himself an investigator - and very often deceiving him to then reveal what seemed impossible up to a few pages before. Yet, in Nothing Other Than Fog, the new book by Patrizia Emilitri published by TEA, there is much more that is told, making the reader feel even slightly different emotions from the usual with a certain uniqueness. And to think that all this happens in the village of Perzeghetto Olona which, precisely with its being so ordinary, upsets the lives of its citizens when poor Nadia is found dead.

Nothing but fog among the sins of the men

The author Patrizia Emilitri intends to want to tell people, their prejudices and their ordinariness before the thriller and the mystery. Other works of this type have made Emilitri known among enthusiasts including The light caress of primroses (Sperling & Kupfer, 2014), The girl who found lost things (Sperling & Kupfer, 2018) and the collection of short stories Serva that earned her the Chiara Prize in the unpublished section.

In this new Nothing but fog, the doors of Perzeghetto Olona are opened to us, where the author creates an authentic contact with its inhabitants, their stories, habits, manias and even their hidden truths. But most of all, a town with a closed and unscratchable social circle and rigid thinking is told. What can happen when a body is found on a sleepy morning?

This is the body of the very young Nadia Bignami which is found in the historic city wash house. Her body is found by Irma Gregorio, who had the only concern of arriving early for mass, before the old wives could start gossiping about her all about her and about her too. But that morning the discovery of that body upset his life and that of all the inhabitants of the small village near Lake Maggiore.

The Carabinieri intervene, but the investigations have undergone a decisive turning point: the last person who he saw the victim alive and left his backpack containing his wallet and documents on the spot. The personal effects belong to Andrea Costa, another young man from the town, the one who defines himself as a good guy and known to everyone. Indeed, already in the first part of the story, Andrea does not run away and confesses that he pushed her girlfriend, causing her that fatal wound. Nonetheless, Andrea does not want to explain what really happened that night and why the two were in the wash house, taking on all blame and facing judicial condemnation. And not only.

As already happens in wider contexts, around a bloody event like this there are many other actors, even if they have not actively participated in the tragedy, who play the role of executioners and judges. And when we talk about a small village of a few souls, this effect is amply amplified.

Andrea's confession lays bare the entire community that wants to close itself up and condemn that young man at any cost, excluding the " rotten apple ”from the basket. The refusal of a society that is not willing to accept the veiled nuances of each of its inhabitants, on the contrary, ignites the claim to know the real motivations of Andrea's gesture. But as a key figure - together with Nadia - Andrea goes against the wind and instead of satisfying the expectations of small society, he relies on time and abandons his fellow citizens to their obsessions, hatred and a dark and increasingly descending parable.

The different yellow

Nothing but fog transcends from the common crime novel for the mere desire to expose the fullness of the sociological character of a community, using the 'mysterious' element to make us understand the contours of it: what pushes Andrea not to confess what happened that night?

Patrizia Emilitri's work goes so deeply into the life of the province, perhaps too much, overly dressing the narrative plot with a wealth of details from the life of every single inhabitant of Perzeghetto Olona. A painstaking work that really made us 'live' those lives and their social context, almost assimilating it page after page. And yet, perhaps with the expectation of finding ourselves in front of a traditional thriller, we have often lost sight of the fulcrum of the story, the motive and the desire to find out exactly what happened that night.

Emilitri therefore packs a different yellow (if you are looking for a more traditional one, take a look at The child who played with dolls), devoid of that bite that characterizes the genre, with much slower rhythms, as if to adhere to the times of the provincial life of his protagonists. A highly sought-after realism that will make you experience the story a little at a time and understand the pain of her characters.