After Bianca from «The affective value» and Redenta from «I giorni di Vetro», a new beautiful female character by Nicoletta Verna in the novel “The winter of the stars” (Rizzoli), still set in the disorder of History in the days of war and the Resistance. And it is Sirio who tells the story in the first person, a little girl with a male name, leader of a gang of peers still close to the fruitful naivety of childhood, a gang with which she lives the daily adventures of childhood, armor to face the drama of the times.
Fiesole, 1943: the war seems far away from there, although the town, famous for its straw work, lives in a bubble of desolate emptiness that the children’s imagination fills with vitality. What embellishes those memorable days of minimal lives is Sirius’s ability to lie, lies as a luxury to overcome the sense of inadequacy, to not give in to adults’ lies and whispered secrets, including the one about an unknown father. And it is through the gaze of Sirio and with the naive language of the game that one crosses woods and ruins of castles, quarries and mysteries, defends fragility and fights arrogance, such as that of the rival gang.
As for the arrogance of adults, in the midst of everything that is not understood, the words “fascism” and “anti-fascism”, “racism” and “Jews”, “regime” and “Nazism”, “war” and “partisans” make room in the gang especially when Dante enters, having moved from Florence with his family who dislike the regime.
The armistice of 8 September, however, «changes all the rules, with the Allies, previously enemies, now becoming the good guys according to the Fiesoleans and who, however, as good guys, bomb everywhere». One day in that difficult winter, Sirio’s gang arrives at a castle in the hills over which ghost stories hover, a place of clashes between fascists and partisans and also the refuge of a wounded soldier without memory or speech.
A “monster”, as it seemed to the frightened Giovacchino, an enemy or a human being to be saved? The gang is divided between those who think of abandoning him and Sirio who uses lies to cure him. Then, the days become difficult for everyone when the Germans settle in Fiesole. The growth of Sirio, the girl with the name of a star, happens like this, as she goes through the ferocity of war, confronts the city and people like Margherita Hack and the partisan Anna Maria Ichino, to finally make challenging choices faced with bold determination.