‘Liberi tutti’ is a drama that unfolds in broad daylight

Five families, a major incident, a primary school, and Rome all around it. Rome, which, as always, is never merely a backdrop, but becomes the very fabric of the narrative. Chiara Gamberale’s latest novel possesses the subtle quality of a comedy-drama, where the fear, horror and violence associated with children become so terrifying that there is no need even to depict them. "Liberi tutti" (Feltrinelli) is a sort of Yasmina Reza’s "God of Carnage", but without the explicit act or a murder weapon in plain sight. Liberi tutti is a multi-layered and elusive novel where everything suddenly shifts, constantly changing tone – just as often happens when speaking to children – never truly knowing the limits and boundaries with any clarity, where the former can always be overcome and the latter often remain unknown for a long time.

The narrative centres on five families, portrayed by the author with great irony but also with keen insight: there are parents who have realised their potential and those perpetually waiting to do so; emancipated yet extremely fragile women; and feminist men who show latent signs of an increasingly uncontrollable rage. The children initially appear to be carbon copies of their parents, but this proves to be an illusion: page after page, they reveal a life entirely their own—an independence that is already inherent in things, in the spirit of a movement that asks for no permission, regardless of age. A restless tenderness that Chiara Gamberale portrays effectively and with great sensitivity.

The narrative voice belongs to Titti, a primary school teacher who assumes the role once played by educators of earlier generations—those capable of understanding everything about their pupils and their parents, teaching them everything and becoming points of reference whom they would often recall with fondness for the rest of their lives. Titti listens patiently and picks up on the subtle clues, but above all, page after page, she reveals the burden of an overwhelming grief that cannot be suppressed, let alone concealed. Titti’s class becomes a multifaceted world made up of young children and ‘big children’ – this is what the diverse group of parents become, as illustrated by the yellow card inside the book, which resembles a treasure map more than the family trees of the five families. Liberi tutti is a novel about the shadows and hidden thoughts that dull the mind and distract. A delicate yet direct book that captures the sense of abandonment which often takes on a nature that is difficult to decipher. A reciprocal dynamic in which parents and children grapple with shortcomings and expectations, between illusions and cruel clashes with reality. Chiara Gamberale offers a style of careful writing that knows how to handle drama and capture the poignant without denigrating it, and the comic without exaggerating it. The Roman author recounts the lives – at times mundane, at times happy, and at times tragic – of women and men, of girls and boys of today and of tomorrow. ‘Victim’ and ‘culprit’ are not merely labels, but the outcome of a story, the final form of a narrative that demands no haste and does not seek scandal, but rather confronts it head-on: “I told you, didn’t I? That we must wait before we can determine in this story who is guilty and who is innocent. All innocent, all heartless—the little children—we know that. Innocent, heartless, yet capable of making choices—the older children: let us not forget that.’ Free, all of them—that is to say, all children regardless of age, role or the time allotted to each. It is a thriller that probes the soul until it reveals its contradictions, a mystery that does not need to be unravelled but rather read and ultimately confronted. Ultimately, it is a liberating book that opens wide onto our present-day reality of sorrowful children, always searching for someone to blame and never for themselves.