Things That Go Unspoken

'Lattanzi chooses to tell her journey, extremely painful because extremely real, of the choice to be a mother first and the frightening realities of assisted fertilisation.' 

-- Paola de Pasquale

'Her story is the emblem of all those things that, it is true, are not told, but with which every woman must deal. On which every woman is weighed, judged, first of all often by herself. The sense of guilt if a woman wants children, but is afraid of losing her job. The desire to be a mother but also to be successful. The inability of men to understand.' 

-- Maria Elisa Gualandris

‘A novel about two desires that often torment this female body: the desire for self-affirmation, ambition, and professional fulfillment that clashes inexorably with another all-encompassing desire: motherhood.’

-- Valeria Parrella

'A book that is too personal, too painful, to maintain the critical perspective of someone who must open it, dismantle it, explain to the reader why to read it.' 

-- Silvia Argento * Il vero scopo della scrittura *

'Lattanzi opens doors she doesn't want to open, reveals secrets never told, chases forgotten memories. The result is a novel that can be read in one breath.'

-- B. Giorgi

'Antonella Lattanzi is one of those rare writers who help men understand the secrets of the female soul, the desire for motherhood and the miracle of childbirth. She does so using truth, talent and the cruel lucidity of a person who is afraid of no one.'

-- Niccolò Ammaniti

'This book touched me to the core. Literature is a magical art, and Antonella Lattanzi has written a book that is part blessing, part curse and entirely cathartic.' 

-- Nicola Lagioia

'With utterly cruel devotion and gut-wrenching emotion, and in a way that has never been done before, Antonella Lattanzi shows us that women’s stuff – the flesh and blood and beating heart of female life that craves to generate another pounding heart despite the multitude of dangers lurking in nature, science, institutional inefficiency and human savagery – is the only real tool we can use to assess the state of the world, hanging as it is between probable abyss and possible salvation.' 

-- Domenico Star