Childhood is not a time free from danger, as Marianna and Chiara know all too well. There are birthday parties in the living room, hand in hand, omelet sandwiches cut in half and hidden in their pockets until recess. But there is also the long shadow of two families that appear very different, yet are alike in the violence with which they pierce. For years, they believed they were alone, the only ones living in darkness, having to face monsters. Instead, they discover that salvation can exist in a pact in which they become for each other the refuge that the world cannot offer. But what happens when that pact breaks under the blows of reality, or perhaps just adult life? After Cose che non si raccontano (Things That Are Not Told), Antonella Lattanzi returns to thrill and shake us with a powerful, deeply true story that tells of every time, in the midst of darkness, someone found a way to keep us alive. “Whatever happened after that, we were no longer ‘me’ and ‘her’ but ‘us’. Even now, after everything that has happened.” Marianna and Chiara grow up a few steps away from each other in the working-class neighborhood of Bari in the 1990s, in two families that seem polar opposites—one rough and restless, the other orderly and cultured, seemingly perfect—but which turn out to be the same in the way they betray, suffocate, and hurt. An absolute bond immediately forms between the two girls, made up of understanding and courage, of a vital need to support each other. Thus, against the violence that surrounds them, they build a world of their own, and over the years, affection merges with love, at times even becoming attraction and desire. But adulthood drives them apart; growing up is, after all, irreparable. So when the time comes, will they be able to keep their promise to always be there for each other, even in the face of Terror? In a fast-paced, magnetic novel that skilfully moves back and forth in time, Antonella Lattanzi manages to bring together the tenderness of childhood, eroticism as discovery and the sense of impending threat within the walls of the home, the fear that something will suddenly break, without warning. But it is precisely within this tension, against all expectations, that the poetry of life ignites, along with a stubborn and shining goodness capable of disarming the reader's heart.