The Intimate Life of Our Ancestors. Explanatory Note for My Cousin Lauretta, Who Would Like to Believe That She Was Born as a Result of Parthenogenesis

Bianchi Pitzorno's book immerses the reader gently but inexorably, like into the sea. Family sagas are always interesting, but here, in addition to the family secrets that are revealed to the main character, we are also initiated into the myth of Orpheus, which she studies as a researcher. It turns out that each of us living in modernity is, in part, an Orpheus — we move forward, hardly looking back, because the past holds not only the ceremonial portraits of our ancestors but also their secrets. Love and betrayal, desired and unwanted pregnancies, births and perinatal losses, the birth of long-awaited heirs and illegitimate 'bastards' — everything that remains unspoken and that polite families do not discuss, crashes down upon the main character in an endless stream. And the reader, following her, is free to choose their own position: would I, like Ada, be able to know others' secrets without betraying them to the public?