The Fishermen’s Island

I’m working on a new book

It came to me almost out of nowhere, after a visit to Isola dei Pescatori, one of the Borromean Islands on Lake Maggiore.

I had no plans to start a new story.

And yet something about that place stayed with me. At first it was only a feeling. A very strong one. Hard to explain.

Walking through the island’s narrow lanes, looking at the moored boats, the nets, the lit windows over the lake, I sensed that something else lay beneath the calm surface of the place.

Nothing you could see. Something older. Like certain silences that aren’t ordinary silences. Like habits handed down for too long. Like small gestures everyone seems to know without anyone having to explain them.

I started taking notes almost right away. Fragments. Atmospheres. Night images.

The most unsettling feeling was this: that some things there have been going on for centuries.

I couldn’t tell you why. Maybe it’s the lake. Maybe the way the fog erases every outline. Maybe the fact that some places seem to live outside of time.

That is exactly the border I want to write about: the point where a community has guarded something for so long that it can no longer tell it apart from normal life.

I’m working on a slow, atmospheric story made of dark water, processions, silent churches, distant lights on the lake, and memories that never seem to have truly stopped.

The deeper I go into this book, the more I feel that some places don’t need to invent mysteries. They already keep them.

Notes from a novel still wrapped in fog.