Notte di vento che passa

This is the story of Cosima and the most memorable year in her life, when she turned eighteen and “so many things happened to her for the first or last time.” Cosima grew up in a country town and recently moved with her family to the city of Cagliari. Ever since she was a young girl, she always lived inside books, “fictionalizing” reality to make it more captivating. Her father does the same thing, he is a hopeless optimist who creates gloomy paintings and is often unemployed. Her mother, on the other hand, has to support the entire family by working as a cleaning lady, but she despairs over the fact that people in town call them gentixedda, little people. Cosima likes the sky over Cagliari, the sea at Poetto, her literature professor, and her best friend nicknamed Abya Yala: a wealthy kid who hates rich people and has the temperament of a revolutionary. But she misses her hometown a lot, so she goes back to visit her grandmother as often as possible. During these escapes, she falls in love with Costantino, a shepherd and a musician who is much older than her; he is very handsome, mysterious, and sad, and he immediately becomes her Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. She slowly influences him with her dreamy outlook and wins him over: they share an exciting and very romantic love story filled with horseback escapades and secret meetings. But their enchanted bubble is destined to burst as reality closes in on them with all of its brutality: in the real world Costantino is married, Cosima’s mother has fallen seriously ill, and Abya Yala is about to leave for Cuba, possibly forever. And Cosima is so sad that, for the first time, she is forced to climb down from her tree and set her feet on the ground. However, the violent collision with reality and the impetuous ups and downs of this memorable year will help her figure out what kind of adult she will become. They will reveal the recipe for experiencing pain like “wind passing through the night” and, maybe, to find a love that can survive in the real world.