The missing pages

In this brilliant first novel, we are taken into the imperfect, modern world of a well-to-do Roman family where something has gone very wrong. In the rich, cool, hushed atmosphere of hidden emotions, unexpressed anxieties, and missed communications between adults and children, nineteen-year-old Federica Forte, a philosophy student and the youngest of three girls, has for some unknown reason gradually gone mute. The doctors diagnose her case as aphasia and neoteny, and her family gathers round, trying to draw her out, but to no avail. Federica, who still lives at home and keeps a diary, begins…