Blog di Oriana

Press review

“Finding Mr Right – adventures of a single Italian woman between tradition and modernity” by Oriana Guarino

(Original Title E` L’UOMO PER ME)

A stubborn determination to meet the companion who will banish her loneliness drives Oriana, the heroine of this novel, to get involved in situations which are often paradoxical and tragi-comic, sometimes only sweetly/mildly sad and painful.  

The work consists of fifteen short stories, each of which can stand on its own, though a pervasive irony gives them unity. The characters we meet along the way (the miser, the mummy’s boy, the self-taught man, the cad, the hypocondriac, etc.) are full of humanity, real people whom you might meet any day of your life.

In the background, ensuring continuity, is “mamma Paolina”, a clownish character expressive of Southern Italian popular wisdom that delights in dispensing contradictory advice (we all know there is a saying for every circumstance) – the advice we latch on to in trying to negotiate the complexities of life. Precisely because it is curiously incoherent, such advice turns out to be embarrassingly useless.

The stories also have another dimension. They take us on a journey through a human situation that is not the sole preserve of one social category (so-called “singles), because the quest for someone or something that will help us bear, or cover over, our essential loneliness is common to us all.

HE’S THE MAN FOR ME is one of those books – as we say of certain people we chance to meet – which leaves a lasting mark on us/change our view of things for ever.