I would like to recommend a book that can be read in an afternoon. It is entitled "Twenty-four hours in a woman's life"and was a bestseller almost a hundred years ago. Over time, it has become a classic. It tells a story within a story, with a narrative structure known as a frame story.
Scandal and criticism
The book begins in a hotel where the guests talk about what has happened that day: a lady, who was staying with them, has just left her husband and has been taken away from him. children to go away with a handsome man who had been walking around for a few days and who had not gone unnoticed. The conversations revolve around the case and everyone, in a state of shock, criticizes the woman's decision, considering that her actions are reprehensible and that nothing good will happen in the future.
Only one gentleman is not hard on her and comments on the decision in an indulgent manner. Mrs. C., sixty-four years old, hearing his opinion without judgment, feels compelled to choose him as her confidant. She is, to all appearances, an elderly, elegant lady with an impeccable reputation.
Mrs. C. has a heavy stone in her heart that she feels the need to throw into the void: she unburdens herself to him, alone, the next day. At that moment, she tells him about an episode, which occurred 20 years earlier in Monte Carlo, of which she deeply regrets and which she has never told anyone. At one point she says that she would like to become a Catholic so that she could go to confession because in a single day she did something that she judges herself of every day.
People willing to help
The novel has many points of reflection, but I'm left with one that has captivated me: the imperative need we have to unburden ourselves to those who do not judge us. That's why, many times, we find ourselves telling our life to a perfect stranger, who doesn't care about us.
As Stefan Zweig, author of this short novel that grabs you from minute one, says: "The world may be cruel but there will always be people willing to help and comfort us".
