Abstract to the book "The Great Miracle of Love" by Ardone V.: A magnificent novel about the amazing connection of a girl with a doctor who decides to free her, about the eternal need of a person to be recognized by others in order to understand that he exists. The mother named the girl Elba after the river in her homeland. They lived in a psychiatric hospital, which Elba calls a Half-World and which became a refuge for them. Then the mother disappears, and the girl can only grow up, keeping a "Diary of mental disorders" of new arrivals and telling them about doctors and nurses. The Half—World universe is the only one she knows, at least until a young psychiatrist, Fausto Miracle, starts working with her to get her out of the hospital. A few years earlier, Italy had passed the Basaglia Law on Psychiatric Care and Psychiatric Reform, which contained instructions for the closure of all psychiatric hospitals. Dr. Miracle takes Elba to his home, where she will live as his daughter. He has never been a good father to his own children; Elba is the only one he chose himself and through whom he learned the burden and power of fatherhood."Someone else's life sometimes seems mysterious and reckless to us. And it is freedom that makes us so incomprehensible. A person is able to understand only himself, everything else seems crazy to him. My Mutti wasn't crazy at all. In this world of madmen, she kept her sanity. But she stayed here so as not to disown me. I came up with a fairy tale about the Half-World, about a huge cruise liner that will certainly bring us love, about Captain Gaddy, who, despite all obstacles, leads us to salvation. And under the guise of a fairy tale, there was a truth that completely fit on a typewritten sheet: in order to give me life, she gave up her own" (Viola Ardone). Read more…