Maria Teresa de Donato

Ocean of Senses Maria Teresa de Donato

Life is a journey, a journey we make simultaneously in two directions: forwards, through the experience of our everyday routine, but also backwards through our memories. It is precisely during a journey by car that Claudia, the protagonist of this novel, a woman of Sicilian origins born in Libya in the 1940s at the time of the Italian colonization, lives again her past. All of a sudden fifty years of life whizz at the speed of the light before her very eyes just like images imprinted on a film. Many are the memories as well as the questions, profound and introspective, that Claudia asks herself while looking for an honest answer in the hope of having learned the lessons that Life might have tried to give her, but above all, in the hope of having understood them as to avoid to repeat mistakes she might have made - assuming that 'mistakes' have really been made... Drastic and completely unexpected changes disrupt her existence, therefore, making the protagonist ponder on them and leading her to proceed as an automaton, expecting absolutely nothing exciting to happen. However, Life, or God, Fate, the Universe or however we wish to call It/Him/Her - Claudia is no longer sure about it - seems to have different plans for her. Ocean of Senses is, therefore, an introspective fiction novel that was supposed to be anything but erotic and that, on the contrary, it is as such in the highest and purest sense of the word