On Saturday 10 May 2025 at 18.00 pm, at the Feltrinelli bookshop in Piazza dei Martiri in Naples, Goffredo Fofi, Stefano De Matteis, Sergio Marra will speak at the presentation of Angelo Montella's novel A SHORT STORY OF HOW I BECAME NORMAL (Colonnese Editore, April 2025).
Readings of passages by Giovanni Ludeno, Lauraluna Fanina. The meeting is moderated by journalist Alessandra Pacelli.
Naples, a city of intrigue and hot stages, sees the return of an icon of local theater: Angelo Montella launches his new novel, “Breve storia di come sono diventa normale,” published by Colonnese Editore in 2025.
This is the second literary adventure of this experienced character, after the success of “La vita è una partita doppia” in 2021 with Liguori, and it promises to shake generations with a raw and ironic portrait of the normality imposed in an era of economic boom and galloping contradictions.
A Sharp Education Novel
With the sharp pen of someone who has lived on a razor's edge, Montella paints a coming-of-age story that spares no one, as underlined by a scathing observation: “The story that Angelo Montella tells us (and that we can read as a prequel to La vita è una partita doppia published a few years ago) is a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age novel. Full of rituals, tests and ceremonies to adapt to. An obstacle course that defined the new life of the lower middle class of the fifties and sixties, where everyone, from family to school, was mobilized to make the kids “harmless”. It is a dive without a safety net into a world where the rules of post-war reconstruction force young people to swallow the dust to pretend to be "normal", between cutting irony and a veil of rebellion.
From Economic Boom to Dusty Roads
The novel does not limit itself to telling: it unmasks the hypocrisies of an era obsessed with well-being, as emerges directly from the inside cover: “In a world projected towards well-being, driven by the desire for a happy life, satisfied by consumption that compensates for the horrible specter of war, poverty and hunger, how does one become an adult? By accepting the new rules imposed by the family and by complying with the will of the community. Easy to say. But more often by living one’s difference as a contrast and feeling out of place even if forced, by obligation and paternal will, to leave the street, the dust of the alleys like the rocks of Mergellina, the ball and the raids of the urchins to accept the rules that the lifestyle of reconstruction imposes…”. A fictionalized autobiography that serves as a warning to future generations, painting a picture of a rough and cumbersome Naples. Originally from San Gennaro Vesuviano, Montella has lived a life of a real tough guy: former administrative director in a construction company, with a two-year stay in Saudi Arabia as an executive, before throwing himself into theater in 1980 alongside Igina Di Napoli, reopening the legendary Teatro Nuovo in Naples and leading it for over thirty years at a national level. Now, with this book, he does not miss the opportunity to let everyone enter for free at the presentation event.
Article published on May 8, 2025 - 13:43 pm
It's interesting to see how Angelo Montella has evolved his writing, and I'm curious to find out if this new novel can really reflect the contradictions of our time. Normality is a difficult concept to define.