L'ultimo terrestre (2011)

The story takes place around 2010, before first contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. The arrival of UFOs, announced by governments, is treated like a late-night news item that has not really excited anyone. Society is in the grip of a deep economic crisis, and people respond to the coming of the extraterrestrials with bizarre reactions or incoherent mystical-religious interpretations. The protagonist, Luca Bertacci, is a disillusioned, solitary misogynist. He seems to have been abandoned by his mother when he was 13, and as a result he grew up resentful toward women. Luca spends his life working as a waiter in a bingo hall and dealing with dishonest, arrogant colleagues. He rarely has lunch with his father, an elderly farmer who lives alone and relives the pain of his wife’s abandonment each time. The protagonist is secretly attracted to Anna Luini, the neighbor he watches through binoculars. Luca’s only friend is a transgender woman, Roberta. The first contacts with the aliens involve him directly: a delightful female alien secretly moves in with his father, lifting him out of his unhappiness. The story also introduces the neighbor’s boyfriend, who makes a living organizing multi-level-marketing-style conventions about the arrival of the aliens, passing himself off as an internationally renowned scientist when in reality he sells only T-shirts. Anna’s cat goes missing after being killed by her boyfriend in an unjustified fit of aggression; this will be the event that brings her and Luca together. As for the boyfriend, he will be abducted by the aliens at the end of one of his media events, and released only some time later. Roberta is brutally beaten by Luca’s colleagues, who leave her dying in the arms of her friend, who lacked both the strength and the courage to intervene and defend her. Following this incident, Roberta is resurrected by the aliens and taken away with them in an act of salvation. These events seem to offer Luca redemption from his inhibited, introverted existence, while the aliens gain an ever-stronger foothold on the planet. A key event is the female alien’s escape from the father’s farm: the creature has realized that, under the influence of alcohol, he can become a highly destructive person. For his part, the father is eventually forced to admit to Luca that his mother’s disappearance was not due to a simple departure: in fact, he had killed her after one of their arguments, which had been triggered by his drunkenness. The aliens—who, in the neighbor’s words, resemble “grays”—will prove better able to distinguish good from evil than humans are. Through this ability, they ultimately bring hope of happiness into Luca Bertacci’s life. In the end, he proves capable of reconsidering his destructive behavior, unlike many of the depraved people on Earth who surround him.