At 154 Via Comelico, Villa Debora rises imposingly: a bold answer to the productive (and performative) restlessness of today’s Milan, the garden inviting entry from the height of the Liberty era, while the roof seems to stretch upward in an attempt to touch the sky now crowded with the tips of the tallest skyscrapers.
This is the setting in which Eight Girls comes to life, the new novel by Aurora Tamigio (published by Feltrinelli, after the success of the debut bestseller The Surname of Women, Bancarella Prize 2024): like silent inhabitants who fill every corner, from the early 1900s they still occupy the rooms a piano out of tune, a gorgeous chandelier not functioning at the end of the corridor, a parquet that would clearly benefit from polishing and a layer of dust that covers everything.
A Liberty-style Villa in the Heart of Porta Romana
But the house, which for years stood uninhabited, is now animated by eight lives on the run from a world from which, for one reason or another, they feel rejected: to set everything in motion is Sara, who with her volcanic energy launches a refuge project where women can find shelter and strength.
In reality, that house… doesn’t exist. Or rather, the villa that inspired the author for the novel’s setting did exist, but although Via Comelico is there and unfolds amid the dynamism and elegance of the Porta Romana neighborhood, its street numbers stop at 44, where the road crosses Viale Umbria.
Impossible, therefore, to render a concrete image of what reality looks like; but, while it is enough to wander through the most distinctive districts of the Lombard capital to spot Liberty villas from those years, in reading one can explore the corridors of the house, its colorful rooms, the kitchen with IKEA utensils that have replaced the precious silverware of its first owner, the garden where each one has their own patch of land to tend at will.
Eight Women in Search of a Refuge
Next to Sara is Lidia, her lifelong partner, a quiet presence and constant support; there is Argenta, who for Sara is not only daughter but also an shadow, and who harbors a blind faith in her. There is Nadia, a former hairdresser and beautician who finds the strength of bonds with the others precisely in the aspects that, to them, seem to distance her.
There are also Valeria and Adele, mother and daughter who arrive at Villa Debora to escape a man convinced that love means violence, then Piera, a 20-year-old bartender unable to find her place in the world, and Gloria, who lives at the mercy of a diagnosis she cannot escape and who tries to soothe it with knowledge and study.
Within Villa Debora’s walls these eight women learn the compromise, the beauty of taking a step back to give space to another, the respect for rules that guide toward a more serene coexistence and the sharing of every possession. Discovering bonds that are hard to form in the outside world, each of them learns that the concept of family can take on infinite shapes.
A gilded cage from which leaving becomes a challenge
But is the key to perfect balance really total sharing? Like a dress sewn on too tight, many of them begin to find the idea of not being able to freely step out from there to explore the city with its bars and shops in the center, or the prohibition on using mobile phones imposed by Sara, suffocating. They feel more and more the need to forge new relationships, setting aside the presupposition that all of them must necessarily have bad intentions.
And so, the place that was supposed to be a shelter from dangers becomes a gilded cage from which leaving becomes a challenge. It seems the house itself and the enormous plane tree in the garden, with its roots so stubbornly clinging to the ground, want to reassure that cracks in the walls of the building are not a threat of rebellion, but merely a small hint of time passing.
The villa will stay there waiting for them until their return, almost suggesting that the girls should feel free to go out and transgress the rules, with the option to come back at any moment.
Sara, a powerless spectator of a balance that changes
And Sara, the architect of a project born to guarantee protection and shelter, takes the place of a powerless spectator who can intervene only to a limited extent in the choices of her roommates, unable to accept not being able to have everything under control.
As the balances gradually tilt, Villa Debora becomes an active observer of their changes and growth. The girls discover the world, explore, have experiences that go beyond the everyday within its walls. And she waits. She remains there, with creaking floors and colorful rooms, the attic lair of dormice and the green wrought-iron gate, at 154 Via Comelico, nostalgic testimony of a Milan that has long since faded.
