THE MOTHER, THE SON, THE MENTAL ILLNESS.

LOVE. ILLNESS. SURVIVAL.

Three words that, through Veronica Raimo’s pen, become an emotional minefield.

When I bought Sabbie Mobili, the fourth book in the series that Rizzoli dedicated to the Ten Commandments, I was quite sure I’d find something of myself in it. After Niente di Vero, Raimo became one of those voices I fully trust.

AND I WAS RIGHT.

As soon as I reached the seventh line of the first page, I already knew — this could be one of those books that echo inside for a long time.

Nothing particularly striking happens at that seventh line. It simply says:

“she loved going to bed.”

We’re at the beginning of the story. The protagonist, a nine-year-old boy whose name we never learn, has just started his tale.

Raimo’s text is linked to the fourth commandment, “honor your father and your mother”, and I had imagined that family would be the main theme.

BUT HERE, FAMILY IS BOTH WOUND AND REFUGE.

What I didn’t know was which of the countless shades of this topic would be explored.I understood it (or thought I did) when I read that, for a nine-year-old boy, one of the most defining things about his mother is that she spends a lot of time in bed.

I thought: “oh no” and, right after, “oh yes.”Both turned out to be right.

THIS IS WHERE EVERYTHING BREAKS.

Sabbie Mobili is the story of a son’s love for a mother who — it soon becomes clear — struggles to stay grounded in reality.She struggles to see her son, to hold him as flesh and bone rather than as a ghost to be kept away — a constant reminder of the love she lost (his father, who abandoned them).

They live in poverty, because the mother doesn’t work, in a neglected house whose smell, for anyone used to fabric softener, would be unbearable — yet for the child, it’s simply his mother’s smell, and therefore, lovable. Because he knows no other.

THE SMELL OF LOVE IS OFTEN IMPERFECT — RAW, REAL, TIRED. The heartbreak in Raimo’s story lies in how we perceive the mother’s existential pain through the words of a child — one who can’t name what’s happening to her (and perhaps it’s not our place to name it either).He can’t understand why “the ladies” come to take him to school, or why his mother needs “little helpers” in pill form when his love should be enough.

Yet one thing is absolutely clear to him — and hits harder than heartbreak itself: the love.For his mother. For the life they share. For the fragile, intimate world where it’s just the two of them, against everything.

LOVE AS DEFIANCE. Love so powerful it’s worth disobeying his mother — to make it eternal, whispered every night by the blackbirds perched on the bedside table.

IN THE END, THIS IS THE REAL COMMANDMENT: TO LOVE, EVEN WHEN IT HURTS.