All unhappy in their own way, regardless of their social or family status, devoured by that imperfection that often heavily marks the relationship with the family (also problematic), with their own body, with themselves, with friends, all “made of knots”, Chiara, Saverio called Save, Luca, Claudio, Tilde, Nicole, Giulio attended the scientific high school in Messina in 1998: Clear, dreamy and complicated («who resembles me a bit», says Moraci, as «her family resembles mine»), a girl from a good family who would like to be a writer, in her third year of high school, is attracted both by Luca, the son of a head doctor, as handsome as he is murky, the last class of high school, and by Save, with unruly curls and a strong physique, the son of a rough and rude fisherman and a tired and worn-out mother. Save is Luca’s companion, who despises him because he is a “fishmonger”, and by Claudio, who is his sincere friend, well-off, with unloving parents, and with a thousand complexes starting from his physical appearance. And there are the tensions of youth, the “daddy’s boys” who have a lot and those from the suburbs who have little, the spoiled and vicious and the others who are neither good nor bad and who stand on the edge between good and evil. And there is both romantic love with the discovery of sex, and violent and sick love, there is “a love story of resilience”, as Moraci says, and there is another unspeakable one, there is the pain of offended bodies and for some there is a destroyed adolescence, with many breakups within definitive breakups.
Dreams that have faded away without consolation, self-destruction, but also new hopes, as for Chiara in writing, where she can be in the company of her teenage self and remember how she was, full of youthful strength and hope for what was yet to come.