Luisito: A Love Story

by Susanna Tamaro

Overview

If life is a fairy tale, it deserves a happy ending. Anselma is a retired teacher, a lonely, elderly widow whose self esteem has been battered by both her husband and her estranged the children. But her life is dramatically changed one sultry summer evening when she finds an abandoned parrot next to a dumpster, and impulsively decides to take it home. While Anzelma cares for the parrot, she is nurtured by that relationship. The ice around her heart melts, and memories resurface: a lost friend from adolescence, the disillusionment of marriage, her love of teaching and the abrupt ending of her teaching career. Thanks to the parrot Luisito, Anselma reclaims her will to live. But her enthusiasm is short-lived when a malicious neighbor tries to sabotage her happiness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788898475193
Publisher:	VandA ePublishing
Publication date:	11/01/2013
Sold by:	eDigita
Format:	eBook
Pages:	74
File size:	363 KB

About the Author

Susanna Tamaro was born in Trieste, Italy, in 1957. When she was 19 years old, she moved to Rome to attend the Experimental Center of Cinematography, from which she graduated in Film Direction. She was an assistant to Salvatore Samperi and worked on scientific documentaries for television. In 1981, during a month-long stay in a small town on the Austrian/Hungarian border, she wrote her first novel, Illmitz, which attracted the interest of Trieste author and intellectual Claudio Magris, who tried unsuccessfully to get it published. She spent the next few years writing novels and short stories which were regularly rejected by publishers, until Cesare De Michelis of Marsilio published her debut novel, Head in the Clouds (1989), which won the Elsa Morante Opera Prima Prize. That same year, following a bout of asthmatic bronchitis, she left Rome for a small town in the Umbrian hills. In 1991, For Solo Voice (1991) was published to critical success, followed by the childrens book Chubby Heart. Two years later, she wrote the best-selling Follow Your Heart (1994) which became the most commercially successful Italian book of the century, selling over 15 million copies in 40 countries, and from which Cristina Comencini produced a film. In 1994 she also wrote the children’s book The Magic Circle. In 1997, she wrote Anima Mundi, followed by Dear Mathilde, an imaginary correspondence with a friend living in Africa. The next year, she wrote a story collection about the difficulties of the immigrant experience, called Outsiders. In 2005, Rizzoli published a collection of essays entitled Every Word is a Seed. In 2007, she wrote Listen to my Voice, in which Marta, the young protagonist of Follow Your Heart, returns home after her grandmother’s painful death from Alzheimer. In 2007, she wrote Luisito: a love story, about an elderly woman who rediscovers her desire to live thanks to an abandoned parrot she adopts. The novels that followed are: The Big Tree (2009), Forever (2011) and Every Angel is Terrifying (2013). Susanna Tamaro currently lives on a self-sufficient farm in the Umbrian countryside, surrounded by nature and a host of animals, including bees, from which she produces honey. In addition to writing, gardening and practicing martial arts, she devotes her time to various humanitarian projects, oriented to assisting those who are most vulnerable in society (women and children), helping them to help themselves. In 2000, she founded The Tamaro Foundation which is funded by the rights of her books and by donations.