“Too many lies, Too many truths”

COOKIES OF PUMPKIN AND COOKED APPLES
(the recipe is from my English friend, John)

Ingredients for about 20 biscuits
-1 Quince
-150 g Pumpkin (weighed without peel)
-300 g flour
– powdered sugar
-100 g Butter
-1 Egg Yolk
-1 Vanillin sachet

Preparation

First we peel the quince, cut it into cubes, cut the pumpkin into pieces and steam both for about 10 minutes. Once cooked, whisk the pumpkin and quince and leave aside.
Mix the egg yolk with the softened butter and add the vanilla, the flour and the apple and pumpkin smoothie, kneading until we have a homogeneous mixture.

Dust the work surface with a little flour and roll out the dough with a rolling pin, trying to obtain a sheet of about half a cm thick. With a glass, cut out some discs of dough of the size that suits us best and place them in a non-stick oven pan and then place them in a preheated oven at 220 ° for about 15 minutes.

Once the biscuits are cooked and cooled well, sprinkle them with icing sugar. Let’s combine them with a cocoa, ginger and cinnamon herbal tea and we will have the perfect autumn snack to face a beautiful harrowing and exciting TV series as the book from which it is taken: ALIAS GRACE.

Autumn is a season with which I will make peace sooner or later.

One day I will be able to come to terms with the feeling of anxiety and sadness that it causes me to make the leaves and hair fall, with its taking away the sun and the salt from the skin.

Books and TV series certainly help to deal with it, as well as herbal teas, plaid, hot food.

But it remains the season that I struggle the most to face …

And maybe that’s why I always find myself reading or watching something sad, scary or bloody.

To exorcise?

Maybe.

Anyway, Margareth Atwood had entered my life in an ordinary October, thanks to a booklet that I had found in a huge library in the center in the psychological thriller section, my favorite as you may have guessed by now, long before TV brought it. in the limelight thanks to the transposition of “The Handmaid’s Tale”.

  The cover was rather anonymous, but the plot was chilling enough to make me buy it.

“If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged.”[1]

What I remember about the novel is that it deals with a difficult subject with an incredible poem, we get excited listening to Grace’s stories, even though the basic coldness, the detachment with which the women in her books tell of violence and overwhelmed. It is a Gothic work, which cites the sources from which it draws and at the same time mocks them. << The protagonists of the novel, Grace, Doctor Jordan and the other Grace represent different worlds and different cultures, but also different aspects of the human psyche: in fact, the characters of Alias Grace allow Atwood to deal with issues dear to her, the same ones that have always characterized his works and that can be traced back to the dichotomies nature / culture, woman / man, Canada / USA, Irrational / Rational. >>.

It is a book that does not leave you indifferent!

I started it without having the slightest idea that it was based on a true story[2], or that years later it would be a mini-series with exceptional protagonists! Sarah Gadon (11/22/63) is the protagonist, flanked by Kerr Logan (Game of Thrones) in the role of the alleged accomplice, Anna Paquin (True Blood, X-Men) in those of the murdered housekeeper, Edward Holcroft (Vampire Academy) is the face of the doctor who will seek an answer. The mini-series was directed by Mary Harron (American Psycho) with a screenplay adapted by Sarah Polley (Dawn of the Living Dead, Splice).

“If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.”[3]

In the States it was broadcast from 25 September to 30 October 2017 on CBC Television before being released in Italy (thanks to Netflix) on 3 November.
In autumn.

Coincidence????

Innocent or guilty?

It is the starting question that arises in the book, and in the TV series. But as we go on with the story we are less and less interested, what attracts us, which perversely keeps us glued to the pages or to the screen is the double personality of Grace. The doll face that she collides with the deeds of a seasoned criminal. Her sad eyes and mischievous mouth. In my opinion Gadon was spectacular in never giving a respite, in making us continually doubt the story. Memories. Facts.

Lost.

We feel completely at the mercy of her words: each term of the story is evaluated and introduced with a specific weight. Revelator is one of the initial monologues where Grace obsessively analyzes the word “murderess”, its sound, its meaning.

We are in a labyrinth.

The labyrinth of the mind, the scariest possible one: is what we are seeing real or is it a sensation?

And no matter how hard we try, we can’t get out of it.

Not unharmed, at least.

Just like the doctor.

What caught me about the mini-series is the time. There is not a succession of actions, but a studied slowness made up of looks and silences. And blood. And abuses. And lies. And smiles. And moments of pure joy.

A life like many others.

Well, if it weren’t for the brutal murder, of course.

It should be looked at in the original, because in the dubbing some of the macabre nuances of the dissociative identity disorder[4] were lost, which the protagonist presumably suffers from – or which she can pretend very well …

“The small details of life often hide a great significance.”[5]

I was quite ready, having read the book before, but if you are facing this chess game between truth and lies for the first time, I recommend that you prepare some comforting food such as pumpkin and quince biscuits, which are something delightful in their simplicity, and look away from the mirrors, because you have the feeling that a reflection of us could smirk seeing us so scared, fascinated and in solidarity with the protagonist!

“A prison does not only lock its inmates inside; it keeps all others out. Her strongest prison is of her own construction.”[6]

---

_{[1] From the novel.}

_{[2] Canada, 1843. Grace Marks has just turned sixteen when she is sentenced to death – a sentence that will be commuted to life imprisonment – for complicity in murder. The murder is that of his employer Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery. With Grace her alleged accomplice James McDermott is also sentenced, who ends his life on the scaffold. But is Grace as guilty as her accomplice or is she innocent? Do you really suffer from amnesia as you claim? Grace, moved between asylums and prisons, leads her life as a recluse waiting for a miracle. There are many who would like to see her outside the walls of her prison, rehabilitated in society. Just to validate a petition in favor of her, the young Simon Jordan arrives in Kingston, where the famous woman is being held. Jordan, a medical graduate and interested in opening an asylum, gladly takes the opportunity to study one of the most interesting cases of recent years. Madness or cunning cruelty? What do the deep eyes of the beautiful Grace hide? Simon intends to find out what really happened to the two victims, but above all what happened to the one who, according to the public opinion, is their killer. Only she can reveal what she has hidden for so many years and, thanks to an intimacy that will grow stronger day by day, Simon will perhaps be able to discover what she has always hidden …}

_{[3] From the tv series.}

[4] _{https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/9792-dissociative-identity-disorder-multiple-personality-disorder#:~:text=from%20Cleveland%20Clinic-,Dissociative%20identity%20disorder%20(DID)%20is%20a%20mental%20health%20condition.,usually%20caused%20by%20past%20trauma.}

_{[5] From the tv series.}

_{[6] From the novel.}