“The Rocheteau Legacy”. The new book by Italian writer Valeria Valcavi Ossoinack

The Italian writer Valeria Valcavi Ossoinack introduces the noir novel “The Rocheteau Legacy” to the faithful audience of her readers. Original, as a beginning, and curious the choice to report in the prologue an event as atrocious as it is pervasive, which carries a profound disturbance: a funeral. The story sees the main protagonists Pierre Rochetau with his departure, and Charlotte, whose disappearance will kick off a series of dramatic and high-voltage events, in Paris that enchants, and accompanies the reader within typical events and emotions of a contemporary family. The key word for the book “the legacy of Rocheteau”, however, is certainly “family”.

The events, in fact, all revolve around this concept. Around family matters, various events gravitate, such as good and bad relationships with each other, possible annuities, economic gifts, sudden disappearances, quarrels, and subterfuges, up to a sort of showdown, which only the most ruthless families covet.

The description of the place where the events take place is accurate and full of details, in particular in the structure and organization of a precise environment: “A few steps from rue Palatine, in the Odeon district”. It may seem trivial, but the description is instead a fundamental characteristic for creating the right atmosphere in a story; in fact, it is extremely important to immediately immerse the reader in a “comfortable” environment, so that he can identify himself with the events that will gradually be presented. The author was certainly careful in the description, clear, and concise, adding, from time to time, more and more details.

This novel captures the reader from the first pages and it will be difficult to break away. She has excellent descriptions of the scenes and the setting, well articulated. There is also coherence in the structure of the text and in the length of the chapters. The foresight of the author also and above all lies in giving life to sequences of effect and strong emotional impact, through an escalation of actions and sensations, which increases in intensity, up to the final climax. The peculiarities that distinguish the author are, first of all, her great expressive and communicative ability; the simplicity and immediacy of important messages, as well as the empathetic ability to tune into the reader’s mood, thanks also to the recurrent use of catchphrases, which contribute to conferring lexical originality.

The author

Valeria Valcavi Ossoinack, Italian by birth and cosmopolitan by vocation, after spending many years in South America, now lives in Dubai. She often returns to Italy, a land that she particularly loves and where she also set her latest novel. She is the author of “Il Mugnaio”, published in 2019, and of “Donna Eleonora”, from 2021, both also translated into English. “Francesca. A Winter in Milan ”is her third novel and is inspired by the character of Francesca from her novel Donna Eleonora.

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