Matteo Nerbi was born in 1976 and lives in Carrara where he is a civil lawyer.
In love with music, he has made the musical metaphor a constant in the four stories of the collection, where as the narrator he is an added character.
In each of the stories, the introspective investigation always predominates, involving both the protagonists and the fleeting extras, all leaving fragments of experience and loneliness, as a set of Hopperian suggestions in which they wallow restlessly and make the narrator the secret of their thoughts, thus allowing them to expose the self-criticism of being a man, always a loser in comparison with the female universe. And each of the tales holds its own secret. Who is Ted Connely, the protagonist of Utrum, a London citizen immersed in loneliness, together with his twin brother Josch, phobic and unable to relate to others?
What is the secret of Zic, an undefined character, with an onomatopoeic name, who moves in his own Fantastic World, in which there is no evening between two mornings? And why is music essential for him? What will fate hold for Mina, after her mornings Hurry, Moka, Cold? The genesis of Zic’s world, the roots of the Connely twins’ anthropophobia, or Mina’s fate, are secrets that will be revealed by reading, taking you to the pages of Antrum, that represent that threshold to the beyond, easier for each of us to cross than we can imagine. And those who will be curious to look into that beyond, the threshold is there in those pages (published by GFE in February 2024).
The cover requested by the author to the artist Sergio Vanello Artist/Author who created it recalling some snapshots of the second story, Utrum, who then gives the collection its title, and who still collaborates with the magazine Linus and is in turn the author of some graphic novels.
The idea that the human mind can contain more than one “I” is very ancient, and the possibility that two contrasting ways of being can coexist in the same individual is particularly fascinating.
Matteo Nerbi lays out stories where perception, hypnagogia, repression and/or remorse rule under the radar.
Tales where the chimerical becomes the constant number, the narrow margin in which the dazzle coincides with wakefulness, the usual from the unusual.
The characters put in place by the author are undulated, fractured, “psychoanalytic” ante-litteram. This is true of Utrum’s narrative voice, complementary as much to the tenacious inductions of a dream as to the altered spheres of reality.
Stories declined in the facets of restlessness-sentimental obsession, abandonment, regret, unconscious attraction to the abyss.
These stories can be read all in one breath, such is the sense of total participation with the events narrated.
Other stories show melancholic and at the same time dangerous atmospheres,
One thing, however, immediately catches the eye: stories can describe an atmosphere or just a sudden action. It can hardly do anything else and in this book it happens that you get frustrated, not intentionally, but this happens when you put yourself to the test to make a micro-thriller,
The writing in these tales is mature.
This is certainly a good sign for lovers of crime fiction who are always on the hunt for novelties, but more attentive now also to the style and words used by Nerbi himself.
The important thing is the writing, the project, the recognizability, the skill.
These stories have therapeutic value: the author gives vent to the reader, allowing him to enjoy these characters.
If that’s true, I think there are stories that will satisfy any frustrated desire – or at least the normal ones.”
In these stories, Matteo Nerbi reveals his fervent, curious mind, full of original and brilliant ideas. Tragic, tragic, dramatic, brilliant tales, a mirror of the life that the author lived without sparing himself. Few writers know how to create an atmosphere with a single adjective, capturing the reader’s attention, who literally gets lost in the narration, with an ending that always amazes.