Letter to the Bride

Licia Allara

Europa Edizioni

What happens when the heart atrophies and no longer tells us where to go? When we are young it is dreams and passions that show us the way, but then life tells us that we must grow up, make rational choices and think about the future and so without even realizing we find ourselves living a life that is not ours, but the one they drew on us because “that’s right”

Letter to the Bride of Licia Allara in just over 100 pages tells the moments immediately preceding a wedding. As in a short film, in a few scenes it tells a whole universe of emotions, dreams and regrets, lost and found opportunities.

The style is elegant and refined, it looks like a watercolor painting. The small church in the clearing overlooking the sea, the clear air of a November morning and the scent of freshly cut grass: you feel like you are already there. But above all, when the story begins, you find yourself in every character, in their stories, those lived and those only dreamed of. The florist, the organist, the priest, the bride, the groom … they are all nameless, like images with blurred outlines, just to allow the reader to be able to identify and find, or maybe lose.

And then, with a breath of breeze, the book ends and you stay there, still suspended thinking about the ending of your story, thinking if you are really living it as you had painted it.