The Aperitif with the Author by Brazzale festival continues in Asiago, on the central stage in Piazza Carli, with an appointment of great emotional and narrative intensity. On Sunday, August 3, 2025, at 5:30 p.m., Concita De Gregorio will be a guest, who will present her latest novel "From mother to daughter" (Ed. Feltrinelli), an intimate and powerful story, which spans three generations of women and three eras of recent history.
At the center of the story is Adelaide, known as Adè, a restless and insecure teenager, forced to spend the summer with her grandmother Marilù, a charismatic and unconventional woman who lives alone, isolated in the family home on top of an island. An obligatory choice on the part of the mother Angela, Marilù's daughter, who reluctantly agrees to entrust her with her daughter for a few months.
Thus begins a forced coexistence between two distant generations: the grandmother, who lived the seventies with extreme freedom and who has chosen to live in retirement, and the granddaughter, disoriented and accustomed to the constant connection of the digital world, from which she is suddenly cut off.
But what Adè fears will be hell will turn out, over time, to be an adventure, a journey of discovery. Behind Marilù's rough character lies a complex story: a past made up of difficult choices, unresolved loves and wounds that have never fully healed. A family secret - which also involves Marilù's mother, a village pharmacist, and her herbalist great-grandmother, now ninety years old - slowly begins to emerge, mysteriously linked to two men who loved her and to the fires that, in summer, lap the house.
While Angela continues to control everything from afar, Adè and Marilù learn to live together, to get to know each other, to recognize in silences and gestures an emotional legacy that is difficult to process but impossible to ignore. In this suspended space, the three women, even if not all physically present, try – between misunderstandings, regrets and acts of care – to understand each other without diminishing the fatigue of the other, recognizing their own fragility and those of others.
Admission to the event is free, subject to availability.
In case of bad weather, the venue of the meeting may be subject to change. For updates and information, you can contact the bookshop through the appropriate buttons at the bottom of the page.
Concita De Gregorio, one of the most popular journalists and writers on the Italian scene, is a long-time writer for la Repubblica, she directed L'Unità from 2008 to 2011, and has collaborated with Clarín, El País and radio and television.
Author of novels and essays translated and loved by a wide audience, she has published, among others: Don't wash this blood, A mother knows, Malamore, I know it's spring outside, Letter to a girl from the future and In the midst of a million frogs and butterflies
For more information, contact the Giunti di Asiago Bookshop by clicking the blue buttons below. 👇
