Who speaks and who is silent

Vittoria moves to the small town of Scauri (the author's birthplace) in southern Lazio. She arrives with her younger girlfriend, buys a house with a garden that anyone can enter at any time, sets up a guest house for animals, finds a job as an assistant in a pharmacy, and plays cards brilliantly at the railwaymen's club. In this provincial setting, she is different in every way, a mysterious and inscrutable figure to the local community. At the same time, however, her confident otherness, directness, and willingness to help arouse the interest of the small town. One day, she is found dead in her bathtub, having apparently drowned by unfortunate accident. Another woman, the story's narrator, Lea, a lawyer living a happy family life with her husband and two daughters, who has always been receptive to Vittoria's magnetism, is not satisfied with the verdict of an accident and embarks on an almost detective-like investigation. She gradually manages to unravel the unknown sides of Vittoria's personality and reconstructs her past, while also deepening her understanding of herself. A story from a provincial town, full of mysteries and everyday, bittersweet joys.