Daria Bignardi: the best has yet to arrive

This entry is posted on number 26-27 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until 1st July 2025.

It is titled Anna della Rainlike the first of his stories, the Postume book by Michela Murgia just out of Einaudi. But it is not a “last” book, in the tired sense that we sometimes give to what comes later. It is a living book, because the stories have been written over many years, read in squares, collected in magazines, then disappeared, forgotten, found.

They are not waste, they are not notes: they are chosen, loved, well -kept texts. The cure – in every possible sense – is of Alessandro Giammeiwho worked on the digital archive left by Michela like those who take something precious in their arms.

Michela wrote how he spoke: who knew it, or even listened to, will recognize his exact tone in each line of these stories.

“At fifty years the time is right: you die with something to give and sayand above all we leave to who remains the idea of ​​having lost the best, the illusion that the show of you would still miss a piece of applause “, is the most cruel phrase of the book, taken from a story written ten years before his death, but still alive and dripping as if he rained in it.

Because Michela, who had many of applause pieces to write, succeeded – magical and witty as she was alone – to leave us the illusion that the best still had to arrive.

“It is strange Milan. Sick, and as you get sick he heals», He writes in a story: and he seems to want to say that pain also has his architecture, and can coexist with the life that goes on.

I miss Michela Murgia, as is missing from all the people who loved them and who read it and as probably missing her enemies: read Anna della Rain He left me the feeling that his sweet and scratchy voice is still here. And that is about to say something new, very important, fundamental, urgent. (Among other things, I too, like Anna, tend to go out when it rains. She goes to run, I walk).

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