‘L'espoir quotidien’. Cultures et imaginaires socialistes en France et en Italie (1944–1949) by Virgile Cirefice, Rome, École française de Rome, 2022, 580 pp., €35.00 (paperback), ISBN 9782728315314

team, has become a site onto which fans project memories and desires. Her physical absence allows for fan involvement: the section of the final chapter on the Mina fan group on Facebook argues that a collective, prosthetic memory of the star is constantly being constructed through the images and memories shared on social media, alongside the tributes by RAI in 2020 which drew on the institutional weight of the RAI televisual archives. As Haworth argues, Mina is ‘everywhere yet nowhere’. Her curated image still has the emotional power of a deeply felt memory, even for younger generations, sometimes felt as a nostalgia for former media forms like early television. In the conclusion Haworth briefly addresses another aspect of Mina: that of camp, reading her through the Sontagian lens of excess, artifice and theatricality. Mention of drag performances as Mina might allow us to open up an aspect that Haworth has not been able to analyse, which is that of Mina as gay icon. More audience research is needed here, but the camp aspects of Mina and her diva vulnerability have made her perfect for appropriation by the queer star Mahmood, or by Italian-American drag queen Aquaria, who was photographed as Mina for Vogue Italia in 2018. Ultimately Haworth’s excellent book points forward to many more meanings of Mina, yet to be explored.