Having dreamt about it for a whole year, Viola is finally here, at Punta del Sole, a resort in the south of Italy. Though she's here for the holiday with her parents and little brother, it’s the first time they've gone to a place where her friends, Valeria and Renata, are also spending their summer. Now old enough to be away on her own, all she has longed for is at last in motion, and her heart races "as if possessed by demons." In her late teens yet still not as experienced as her friends, who knows about things that are secret because they can't be put into words, she’s got so much pent-up energy for what may come if she chooses to invite it. But meeting them brings confusion. So much of their attention is directed at superficial things. Has she missed something? She becomes intensely aware of her body, feels inadequate, and when she blushes, it gives away how insecure she suddenly is.

At that age, I wanted to turn off the light, to be guided only by what I could hear, hoping for a voice that had something to say, a friend who stood for something to believe in. Likewise, to not be misled by attraction that's empty inside, Viola wants to know and be known, not see and be seen. It’s there on the first page: “She can’t help but see herself seen.” Her racing heart exhausts her. She can’t think clearly. Out on a boat, Fabrizio puts his hand on her shoulder. Would he do that with another girl? How can she have a crush on him before he's said anything of substance? If she’d been a blind kid, she would've felt nothing until he spoke. Who is she to him? Her mother reprimands her for sitting like a boy. Must she change? She recalls Valeria saying that happiness is only possible if you belong to somebody. To her mother, love is only real if it lasts forever. Viola makes a list about what she's been told about the mystery of love, that it's to belong to somebody, that you belong to one person for life, that jealousy is a sign of it, that you can’t love two people at the same time. She dreams of being rescued by a boy. But then there’s Renata, who defies conventional sexist narratives. Renata isn’t passive and helpless. She chooses. She rescues herself. Viola loves her, and when they hug, it’s like it’s the strongest love there is.

Forever takes us to a sun-soaked place and what a delight it is to be there, to savor that summer feeling. You can almost taste the salt water, smell the hot sand, hear the waves, see through a heat haze, or feel night air as easy to breathe as a sigh of relief. Viola feels like a soothing friend whose caring smile is your whole world. You want to be with her, calmed by her calm. Only, now she’s not her usual easygoing self. She’s bewildered and apprehensive about how to feel about boys. How can they be interested in her when they don’t know her? When a person is just an attractive stranger, there’s just the surface, the physical package we came in, saying nothing about what’s inside. Viola has to let somebody in to be known for who she is.

She meets the Greek boy Ireneo who wants to have his own boat. They bond over drawing and geek out over Greek mythology, and she tells him that nereids don’t have a fish body (neither do sirens, beings who’ve been totally misrepresented for centuries, and it needs to stop). But he isn’t part of her group of friends, like Fabrizio is, and with his absence she becomes who she thinks boys want her to be. But when Fabrizio turns out to be an unbearable mean narcissist, she remembers herself anew. She rejects him, feels lost, hurt. Finding her way back to Ireneo, who makes her feel safe, she realizes that he's as different as she is, that the way they are different from others and how they've both been disrespected means she can trust him, and that everything she’d been told about love isn’t true at all. She discovers that his name means “peace” (stemming from Eirene, the goddess of peace, the most disrespected divinity), and with him she feels at peace with herself, and it feels good to be close to him. To discover things outside convention and culture, the wild and free nature, like the birds he shows her.

One night, she and Ireneo go on a foolish adventure, which leads to a clash with her family. Her mother reacts to Ireneo in a contemptuous way she wouldn’t have if he hadn’t come from the working class, a tension in a divided society that was to be expected during the unforgivably brutal inequality of the Berlusconi years. Yet even in a dark time, there’s things to live for, camaraderie and music, and Assia seems to love Blur and Green Day as much as I do, and Sergio’s art really captures being young in the nineties. Showing up unannounced where we always found one another to hang out, to listen to music and dance, our pockets blissfully empty of today's weight telling us how to feel, when all this, all we loved, was taken for granted.

There’s a moving scene in Close (2022) in which Rémi, caring more about love than conformity, rests his head on Leo’s shoulder, and classmates misinterpret it as a sign of romantic love. It’s the same in Forever, artifice and culture outside twisting and tearing down what’s natural and innocent inside. We want so for Viola to find happiness, and so we share her exuberance when she falls for Ireneo, who understands her, as he's as scared as she is. The scenes of intimacy between them have both the heat of spice and the sustenance of a vital ingredient in the story. Vital, because the care and tenderness Ireneo shows her let her know which part of who she is is dearest to her, which part will remain when her physical need is fulfilled. The physically intimate scenes are all about understanding oneself and so they are put at the service of the real story and not the other way around. And that we only get dizzying flashes of their intimacy reflects how dreamlike hazy such moments are, almost like fantasy stories a wild side acts out. Moments when we can’t think or feel, only want, make little sense afterwards when we come back to be wholly ourselves, as if our brain has been on holiday.

Who we are when intoxicated by desire doesn’t at all represent who we really are when we’re complete and one side of us doesn’t dominate all others. I agree with the philosophers who say that we can only be wholly ourselves when our focus is balanced so that physical, intellectual and emotional needs are evenly respected. Viola’s usual inner togetherness lets her listen to more than just one side, which is why desire’s dominance is so scary to her. When truly happy and not just experiencing airheaded lust, she can pay attention to mind and conscience along with emotion and physical desire. The scenes when she’s conflicted by confusing desire are carefully, sensitively written. In such a way that even when feverish actions happen without thought, there is so much thought leading up to it that she feels she can trust herself and her judgment. On the last page, Viola writes down what to her is the true meaning of “forever” and it's a truth so perceptive it feels like it has to have been lived.

The writer follows the familiar pattern of progressive liberation but makes the journey feel new. Beauty left alone to be itself, unenhanced to be true to its source, no make-up masking it or interrupting its natural unawareness of itself. Viola’s unselfconscious agency becoming part of the new story she’s written about herself. The metamorphosis at the end of her teens, finding what she loves, becoming the one who loves this independent choice, now part of who she is. This is how she finds her love, how she finds herself, in choosing the love that’s meant just for her because she is the one who has meant it. And so it ends, with the affirmation of a young woman's independence breaking free without turning her back on adult responsibilities. Superb.

I have asked and received permission from the publisher, Tunué, to use these images for the review. Thank you so much, Tunué, for your kind generosity.