The year 1914: winds of war are blowing in Europe. A storm destroys the ship Zeus bound for Brazil. A small dinghy with two boys and a girl on board resists the fury of the waves and lands on the beach of a remote island. The crew is made up of Isabella, smart and enterprising, her older brother Giacomo, shy and disliked due to his numerous tics, and the young Franco-Genoese cabin boy Lucas, accustomed since childhood to survive even in the harshest conditions. They are the three protagonists of "The Forgotten Island" (uovonero, 2024, pp. 176), a novel for girls and boys co-written by Anna Vivarelli and Guido Quarzo and also available, thanks to the collaboration with Emons, in a narrated audiobook by Stefano Guerrieri and downloadable via a QRcode inserted in the paper book.
Having landed on the island, home to a prison until recently, the three castaways discover that it is not uninhabited at all, but populated by a group of strange characters, five men and a woman, a small colony led by a self-styled Governor. Each of them created a second life and a new identity. The kids will gradually learn the reasons that keep them hidden in that place far from everything: a small paradise surrounded by the sea where they can be free or prisoners, depending on their point of view.
Metaphor of adolescence and story about the desire to build or re-build one's destiny, "The Forgotten Island" is a novel with many references to the classics of literature and theatre.
We then ask Anna Vivarelli what were the sources of inspiration for the book:
«Certainly "The Forgotten Island" owes a lot to our readings, but, as always happens to us, we discover these literary sources a posteriori, when the story is finished and we reflect on our work. The first title that comes to mind is Robinson Crusoe by Defoe, but only for the literary topos of the desert island. Much more present is Georges Simenon's The Hotel of the Return to Nature, which struck us above all because it was based on a series of mysterious crimes that actually happened on the island of Floreana. in 1934. But in the spoiled and inept boys who become adults thanks to a shipwreck there is certainly an echo of Kipling's Captains Courageous and Verne's The Mysterious Island In an attempt to govern themselves on a distant island, the immediate reference It's like Golding's Lord of the Flies. The play of deception and roles between characters who seem to recite a script written by themselves harks back to Pirandello's theatre certainly born from our experience as readers, but no more and no different from our other novels".
Can we consider yours as a Bildungsroman?
«Without a doubt: the island is a clear allegory of society, the great stage of the world where everyone plays the role they have chosen. Lucas, Giacomo and Isabella attend the show, participate in it but at the same time are never completely part of it. The island represents the adult world into which children enter, or rather are shipwrecked, and laboriously acquire an identity. It is an uncertain, dangerous world that never stops shaking and seems destined to explode."
What divides the characters of Isabella and Lucas from that of Giacomo?
«Initially the two brothers are separated from Lucas by an insurmountable barrier made of wealth, education, social class, all things that no longer have any importance on the island. And while Isabella and Lucas slowly discover a way to overcome that barrier and get closer, Giacomo is assimilated by the small society of the island because he was never accepted in the world before."
For the three protagonists, is the island an opportunity or an exclusion from the world?
"Both things. For Lucas it is yet another hiding place, but also the place that finally allows him to discover that he no longer wants to hide. For Isabella it represents the opportunity to become stronger and try to choose her own future: for this reason she oscillates between the temptation to stay and that of fleeing. For Giacomo, who due to his syndrome has always lived as an outcast, the island represents freedom, and in this he reveals himself to be very similar to the inhabitants of the island."
A curiosity: how do you manage to work with four hands? Do you have a pre-established method?
«More than method, we can talk about custom. Our shared story is born primarily from chatter and the exchange of ideas, starting from something we have read or that has struck us. Then the documentation phase begins: for The Forgotten Island, for example, climate, vegetation, steamers. Everyone does it on their own and together a large data file is built. When we move on to the page, however, we always write together, from the first line to the last. In practice, we rewrite by modifying, adding or deleting each other's pages. We do this using a color system that is boring to explain but which for us is now almost automatic. And of course, as the story progresses, we discuss the evolution of the plot, plot twists, etc. We do in words what every writer does in his head when working alone. What seems important to us is that the stories written together have a third voice, as if a writer were born who cannot be compared to either of us."