“This whole story is a story of blood,” he writes. Antonella Lattanzi (Bari, 1979) in his book The things that are never told (Reservoir Books, 2024). “Do I really have to tell these things? These things that are not told, very simple things, that one must have experienced first-hand, as Simenon says,” he asks himself in the last pages. “I have to count the blood”she answers herself.
From the first pages, blood flows everywhere. A woman’s body, pierced by pain, slowly spills out before the reader’s eyes. There is blood, violence, sacrifice, pain, rejection. But there is also hope, sincerity, life, death and truth.
It is an honest testimony about a pain that concerns us all: the possibility and risk of being bornLattanzi dares to recount a kind of intimate, personal violence, recounting a commonly unknown part of pregnancy. “I decided to write this novel the day after a subsequent operation in which I felt I had lost everything, my three daughters and my relationship with writing, the desires that had guided me throughout my life,” she explains.
Cover of the book ‘The things that are never told’ by Antonella Lattanzi
The writer tells the life, “everything that happens while you fight against fear”the shadows of a story that is not usually told. Antonella and Andrea want to conceive a child, but this very natural act goes wrong in every possible way. And, despite all the pain suffered, Lattanzi finds the words to share her story.
Dare to be sincere
Two abortions and an unstoppable fight for a desired maternity with assisted reproduction, embryo transfer, multiple pregnancies, embryo reduction. A lot of blood, a lot of violence. Lattanzi tells a part of the story of her life with a sincerity that goes beyond the pages. He strives, at every moment, to get his guts out and write everything he felt, stripping himself completely.
“I had never thought of writing an autobiographical novel, or using the first person in a short story,” he explains, “but I wanted to tell a story that was about many people. I didn’t want it to become a diary, or a sad, emphatic, or pessimistic book; it just had to be a novel. I wanted to write the truth, which does not mean telling the truth.“.
The day Lattanzi underwent embryo reduction, lost her three daughters. It was also the day she decided to start writing. “That day I understood that my vicissitudes were not only my story. Search for a childthe fight for the desire of maternitythe way in which the world looks at a woman’s bodyhow is life lived? abortion“These are issues that are part of many women’s lives. I had that voice to be able to tell this story.”
The violence of motherhood
“I’ll find out that your child’s heartbeat, if you want to have it, is a thrill for you. I’ll find out that the heartbeat of other children, if you don’t have yours anymore, is torture.” Lattanzi tells of all the violence she suffered during her attempt at motherhoodTwo years of bodily changes, obstetric and gynecological violence. A careless, irresponsible, self-centered, and unreliable partner. Many lies to hide the truth, the fear that it won’t work out and the constant insistence that it somehow works. It is the story of an abused body that receives no kind of tenderness from its owner and those around her.
The writer tells how, through her experience of motherhood, changed his perception of the world“Above all, it changed my view of how the world behaves towards you when this desire manifests itself.” The violence with which the doctors and nurses treated her, the exploitation of a vulnerable situation, the inability to act and defend herself because her life is at stake.
“My vision of motherhood has changed because, on the one hand, I have experienced it but on the other, absolutely not. The desire for motherhood is something that takes hold of you and upsets you.. I was afraid of being a mother and I still am, but I wanted to be a mother so badly, and I still want to be.” Two years have passed since all this happened and two years since the publication of this book in Italy. But Lattanzi, with a sweet and innocent voice, continues to tell her story, with all the pain that it entails.
What is not told
“With my book I wanted denounce and start saying the things that are not being saidwhich we never tell.” The things that are never told It is not just the story of a difficult and complex motherhood. Lattanzi does not only denounce the treatment she received from the hospital, the nurses and the doctors. The book is the story of an arrogant, individualistic world. “Society still judges a woman who decides to have an abortion, a woman who decides to resort to medically assisted procreation. It judges and thinks it can manage a woman’s body.”
Harsh, self-violent words that underline the idea of guilt that women have always carried with them. “When society does not give women the freedom to be human beings, beings who decide to have a pregnancy, women think they are selfish and do not deserve pregnancy. I have written a book like this to underline that this is not the case, that we do deserve it.“.
The writer wants to emphasize that motherhood is not only sacrifice and pain, as is often thought. According to her, pregnancy is related to wonder, growth, search, desire, life, but also to fear, uncertainty and enigma. The process of procreation is a universe that hides darkness and lights that cannot be seen with the naked eye.
A happy ending
When she began writing the novel, Lattanzi was still hoping for a happy ending. The story is a terrible confrontation with society, life and death. However, life is not reduced to a sad or happy ending. And this is why the writer writes: “I have to rethink that it’s a happy ending”.
From all this history, what has remained, in the end, is his writing. “I thought that this book was going to be a novel for few. However, after two years, a real novel has been created community of people who share my stories“And this is a huge gift that you have given me.”
Even so, He admits that the book did not heal his wounds“If you’re working on a book that’s intended for publication, it can’t be a form of therapy. Writing can’t be a catharsis, because you’re not writing for yourself, you’re searching for the words to tell a universal story.”
But it was thanks to the same writing process that Lattanzi is still standing. “A novel in the face of all this pain It is an attempt to stay alive and, above all, an attempt to help others survive.”
