L'Inviata Speciale intervista John Stephens, autore de L'Atlante di Smeraldo

Cari Lettori,
è con mio grande piacere che vi presento oggi la mia videointervista a John Stephens, tenuta durante il Salone del Libro di Torino per conto di DIARO DI PENSIERI PERSI. L'autore de L'Atlante di Smeraldo, uscito in contemporanea internazionale il 28 aprile scorso e pubblicato in Italia da Longanesi, con la sua gentilezza e simpatia non ha fatto che confermare l'impressione che avevo avuto di lui leggendo il suo libro. Mi ha guardato senza battere ciglio mentre usavo tre copie del suo romanzo per poggiarci il cavalletto della videocamera (anche seduto sul divanetto dell'albergo, è molto alto!) e ha riso molto quando gli ho detto: "Vedi, John, se tu avessi già scritto tutti e i tre libri della serie The Book of Beginning, non avrei dovuto chiedere in prestito altre due copie dell'Atlante a Tommaso!" (Tommaso Gobbi è il gentilissimo addetto dell'Ufficio Stampa della Longanesi che mi ha aiutato a portare a compimento il mio compito).
Insomma, una fantastica esperienza che spero di essere riuscita a comunicare in pochi minuti di filmato. In attesa di leggere il secondo libro, che John mi ha assicurato uscirà presto (ha detto di avere iniziato a scriverlo da più di un anno), ecco a voi l'intervista (la nostra recensione e le informazioni sull'autore le trovate QUI). Di seguito al video, la recensione tradotta da me in inglese. Enjoy!!
VIDEOINTERVISTA

John Stephens from Alessandra Zengo on Vimeo.
REVIEW The novel begins in a really sad and involving way. Kate, only four years old, is being woken up on Christmas Eve, by her distraught mother who asks her to promise to protect always her brother and sister: Michael, two years, and Emma just one. Soon after that, Clare, this is the name of her mother, hangs round her neck a medallion with a picture of the three children, and Kate is taken away from her and her father Richard together with her siblings on a mysterious flying vehicle. An equally mysterious doctor, a family friend for a long time, accompanies them to a remote orphanage run by nuns.
Ten years later we find Kate, Michael and Emma in another orphanage, which seems to be just the last in a long list. By all accounts, curators and friends, not to mention the potential adoptive parents, it seems impossible to manage with the three "P" brothers (this is the name by which they were originally recorded): they do not even want to be called orphans, and they obstinately assert that their parents are alive and that one day the will be back to take them. The vivid memory of that last night, when Kate was able to breathe the fragrance of her mother, feeling the caress of her hair on the face, is a treasure within her heart, and despite discomfort sometimes gets the upper hand of them, because of the situation of great insecurity in which they live, or rather survive, all three children have never stopped hoping.
After the last attempt to be adopted by an unlikely lady obsessed with swans, they are sent away in a remote location, a place destined to “irretrievable” orphans, or so they say. But as soon as they get off at Cambridge Falls’ train station, they realize that this arid and desolate wasteland, without any colour or vitality, the undisputed realm of wild wolves, can not but reserve the most sinister surprises.
The structure of the orphanage is unique: a huge house, on different levels, with thousands of rooms full of junk, totally uninhabited. To take care of them, two members of the servitude: Abrahm the handyman, amateur photographer, and the surly Miss Sallow. And the director, the mysterious Dr. Pym, who upon arrival of the children is absent due to an unspecified and urgent commitment. Kate and Emma will meet him the next day, and will be immediately affected by the singularity of this character, his reassuring and disturbing attitude and his loving but also deep and hypnotic glance, convincing them to share with him all their little secrets. All but one, so far...
Because the two sisters, telling the doctor that Michael is not with them in that occasion because he’s ill, hide a terrible truth: the day before, going for a stroll on the house, the three found themselves in what they first thought to be Dr. Pym’s study, a place more like an alchemist’s laboratory than a normal office. And there, as if it was waiting for them, they found a strange book with an emerald green cover and white pages. After questioning the usefulness of such a seemingly untouched volume, Michael had thought it was a photo album and he had placed on it a picture by Abrahm, showing Cambridge Falls when it still was a mining town, fifteen years before, when the dam that closed the river had not yet collapsed dragging away the fate of its inhabitants. After Michael’s gesture, the children were catapulted back in time and acquainted the cruel witch (or vampire?)known as the Countess, a woman of unspecified Russian origins, looking for a mysterious object, commissioned to her from her master, the Feral Magnus.
The woman took all the children of the valley as prisoners and locked them in a boat on the river, and blackmails their parents to try to find the hidden object, which is kept in a mysterious room in the depths of the underground tunnels that cross the mountains. This is of course the book our friends had found, the so-called Emerald Atlas, the first of the Books of Beginning, texts of unknown origins, through which all worlds, including the magic one, were created in the mists of time. Unique and valuable books, through which it was not only possible to write, but also to rewrite the history of time and space. The three "P" brothers are thus faced with the book to travel back and forth in time, keeping on meeting Dr. Pym and allying with the belligerent (and funny) dwarf people, with the greatest happiness of Michael who has always believed in their existence; they fight against creatures similar to rotting mummies, whose cries seem to rip the soul of whom has the misfortune to hear, or like anthropomorphic bats which are able to quickly reduce any living being into kebab slices, as one of the characters wisely notes.
But they will also know and improve such feelings as strong as trust and affection through the characters of the healing Grandma Peet and the brave Gabriel. And any of them will find they have not fought in vain during all these years, they spent always together and loyal to themselves, to the bond they share and the memory of their parents, but that from these elements they will be able to bring forth the strength that will lead them to do courageous and heroic deeds. Because fate can be changed, not only if one has the tools and the will to do it, but also and especially if one is not dominated by fear and selfishness, and these three children, who ignore they have a special gift that allows them to transform really the world into a better place. This first book could have an alternative title, the "Book of Kate." She is the key that seems to allow the book to be used for noble purposes. So what does the books of Michael and Emma will tell? We are expecting some more nice surprises.
A fresh fairy tale, which casts a wink to Narnia, Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket, which will undoubtedly entertain children but also curious teenagers and somehow nostalgic adults including myself. The novel is written in a conversational style, very fluent and appropriate to the age group for which it was designed. The author does not exceed in excessive descriptions of characters, places and situations, he just provides (and here you can see his many years experience as a television producer and writer of hit series like Gilmore Girls and OC) inputs which inspires the reader to think and "feel" the vicissitudes of the protagonists.
In an era of spiritual quest like ours, in which "mature" readers are looking for answers in "alternative" paper universe populated by vampires, werewolves and angels, I would welcome and encourage a positive "classical" novel where good and bad characters are well defined and separated, children are once again designated as the hope of man (and magic, if we want) kind, and crime pays, always. Therefore, I would say to those who want to buy it, or give it away, as an aunt, a mother and a reader: to somebody’s opinion, it may not be the children's book of the century, for others, it is already the event of the millennium. Keep on choosing books for you and your beloved ones just listening to your heart, it rarely does mistakes.