Ocean of Senses
by Author Maria Teresa De Donato, Ph.D.
(Abstract)
Life is a journey, a journey we
make simultaneously in two directions: forwards, through the experience of our
everyday routine, but also backwards through our memories. It is precisely during a journey by car that
Claudia, the protagonist of this novel, a woman of Sicilian origins born in
Libya in the 1940s at the time of the Italian colonization, lives again her
past. All of a sudden fifty years of
life whizz at the speed of the light before her very eyes just like images
imprinted on a film.
Her memories project her in the
past, to a time long gone where Claudia sees herself back as a child collecting
stones on the beach of the ancient town of Leptis Magna founded in Roman times;
she enjoys once more and fully the intense and fiery Libyan blue sky and the
Mediterranean waters, while walking again through the street of her beloved
Tripoli. She lives again the sudden and
completely unexpected end of her marriage, the birth of her son, her escape
from Libya following the coup d’état and the coming to power of Colonel
Gaddafi, and her consequent permanent relocation to Italy as a refugee: a life
that ends up being broken several times and that it is yet characterized by her
strong will and determination to start over and from scratch in the attempt to
finally find her own place in this world, a place to call “home”.
Many are the memories as well as
the questions, profound and introspective, that Claudia asks herself while
looking for an honest answer in the hope of having learned the lessons that
Life might have tried to give her, but above all, in the hope of having
understood them as to avoid to repeat mistakes she might have made – assuming
that ‘mistakes’ have really been made…
Drastic and completely unexpected
changes disrupt her existence, therefore, making the protagonist ponder on them
and leading her to proceed as an automaton, expecting absolutely nothing
exciting to happen. However, Life, or
God, Fate, the Universe or however we wish to call It/Him/Her – Claudia is no
longer sure about it – seems to have different plans for her and that apparent
flower that appeared to have lost its lifeblood will flourish, bloom and
explode in such a way as she would have never imagined. An ocean of senses, where true love, intense
passion, sensuality and sexuality, lived in the most uninhibited, spontaneous,
honest and healthiest possible way, will manifest impetuously taking by storm
Claudia’s life as well as that of the person she loves the most. A tsunami of feelings and emotions will fall
upon them in the least expected moment.
Ocean of Senses is, therefore, an introspective fiction novel that
was supposed to be anything but erotic and that, on the contrary, it is as such
in the highest and purest sense of the word.
