Tag: Italy

Review 2589: Lies and Sorcery

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This book was the last one I read for my A Century of Books project. At nearly 800 pages in small type and a fairly bizarre plot, it was quite a slog for me, but I was determined to finish it, especially because I hadn’t finished several others.

The novel is set in Sicily and narrated by Elisa, a young woman who is looking back over the history of her family to try to understand some complicated and intertwined relationships. She is an intrusive narrator, popping in frequently to make observations, and she implies in the beginning that she’s been mentally ill and is not altogether to be trusted. But I didn’t experience a big reveal that labels her as unreliable. Notes in the Introduction indicate that the novel is fairly autobiographical.

Elisa begins with her maternal grandparents. Her grandmother, Cesira, is a schoolteacher who marries Teodor Massia because he looks like a gentleman and acts like a gentleman so he must have money. Unfortunately for her, the Massia family throws him off because he has married a schoolteacher. Worse, he is a wastrel who blows away any money they have, so their daughter Anna grows up in poverty but with an inflated sense of self-worth as the daughter of the upper class.

On the other side of the family, Alessandra, the servant of a peasant, is happy to marry her elderly employer Damiano De Salvi, because for her it is a big step up. Unfortunately, they are not blessed with a child, that is, until she is dazzled by Nicola Monaco, a land agent who seems to her to be a great gentleman. When she has his child, she raises Francesco to think of himself as a person of great potential. The De Salvis spend every penny sending him to school and are repaid by his being ashamed of them.

For her part, Anna Massia (Elisa’s mother) spots her cousin, Eduardo Massia di Carullo, when she is five years old. Her mother points out this wealthy branch of the family, and Anna is struck by how handsome he is, like a prince. When they meet, more than 10 years later, he is struck by how beautiful she is, and she is instantly enamored. Unfortunately, Eduardo, although charming, is not a nice person, and he spends most of his time tormenting her and making her prove she loves him. They are engaged, but his family doesn’t know about it.

Eduardo, for some reason, befriends Francesco, who is a student in town dressed in shabby clothes, but he has adorned himself with some flashy but cheap ornaments and is introducing himself as a baron. It is through Eduardo that Anna and Francesco meet at a time when Eduardo is tiring of Anna. Francesco has no idea of their actual relationship and in fact never has. Then Eduardo disappears.

Anna doesn’t know that the Massia di Carullo family has been paying her mother a small amount of money every month since her father died. When Eduardo discovers this, just before he is ready to break with Anna, he tells his mother to double the amount. But this makes Anna find out about it, and she in her pride goes to his mother and says they don’t want her money. Then she and her mother are destitute, her mother ill and still having to teach, while she, indolent and untrained for anything, lies around the house all day. Francesco having fallen in love with her, she marries him even though he revolts her.

Our narrator describes all this in great detail, along with her parents’ marriage. Her mother is not at all maternal and often is quite nasty to her, but of course that makes the little girl idolize her more and follow her lead in disdaining her father.

The novel begins to turn into absolute weirdness about 10 years after the marriage when Anna learns that Eduardo died some time before of tuberculosis. Eduardo’s mother, who worshipped her son, has retreated from that reality and believes Eduardo is traveling around writing letters to Anna. Dona Concetta asks Anna to bring her the letters, which Anna begins writing.

Even though I have told a lot, by now, I’m not kidding, we are at about page 350 with plenty more to go as the entire family descends into madness.

Morante is a terrific writer, but she really takes her time. At one point early on, she is showing how Eduardo taunts Anna and she provides not one lengthy example but several. And these are sickening conversations.

The Introduction to my NYRB edition states that the theme of the novel is the inability to get out of poverty. That is certainly there, but I think a more important theme, aside from that of the perceived importance of class, is unrequited love. Nearly every character in the book loves someone who either doesn’t love them back or even actively despises them. And these people are tempestuous! And as for sorcery? Is there really a ghost of Eduardo or are these people driving themselves freaking insane?

Although the novel handles human emotions and behavior insightfully, and I sometimes sympathized with Elisa and occasionally with Francesco, most of the characters are more or less terrible, especially in their treatment of others.

I received this book from the publishers in exchange for a free and fair review.

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Review 2573: The Name of the Rose

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Adso of Melk, an elderly monk, feeling he is nearing his death, leaves this manuscript that tells, for the first time, the events of 1327 in an Italian abbey.

It’s been a long time since I read this book, so I remembered more vividly the movie version, which concentrates on the mystery aspects of the novel. But the novel is more about the religious and political upheavals of the time.

As a Benedictine novice, Adso travels into Italy with a learned Franciscan monk, William of Baskerville from Hibernia. William has been asked to mediate an important meeting between two factions of monks—the Franciscans and other Minorite sects who believe in the vow of poverty and are aligned with the French King, and other sects who think the vow is heretical and follow the Pope in Avignon.

Once they arrive at the magnificent abbey high on a mountaintop, the Abbott, Abo, asks William to look into another issue that has recently occurred. Adelmo of Otranto, an illuminator from the scriptorium, has been found dead on the slope below the abbey’s Aedificium, a fortified building that contains the kitchen, the scriptorium above it, and the library above that. It’s not clear whether Adelmo jumped or had help, and Abo wants William to figure out what happened, preferably before others arrive for the meeting. William quickly ascertains that Adelmo must have fallen from the library, but he learns that only the librarian is allowed in the library, a man named Malachy.

Although William has been denied access to the library by Abo, he soon figures out that there is a way to get into it besides the locked entrance. After a visit to the scriptorium, where William and Adso inspect Adelmo’s work area and meet some of the monks, another monk is found dead, Venantius, a Greek scholar. This makes William surer that the deaths have something to do with the library.

He and Adso sneak into the library at night. It is a labyrinth. Moreover, they disturb someone who runs away and are almost poisoned by the air in one of the rooms.

More monks associated with the library die, and William becomes convinced that they are dying because of a secret book. He and Adso must learn the secrets of the library, and William comes to believe that the murders are related to the history of the monastery.

I have concentrated on the mystery, too, but there’s a lot more going on in this book. It is concerned with the conflict between Louis of France and the illegitimate Holy Roman Emperor, between two popes, and the then recent history of the Inquisition against certain heretical religious groups. It has several learned debates, in which the monks disagree about what seem, to the modern eye, to be obscure and trivial issues. And it fully shows the superstitions of even the most learned of men (except William) and the pit of fear that was life in this monastery.

Although the novel seems straightforward, there is a lot more going on. To me, Eco seems to be mocking the beliefs of the church at times—some of the learned disputes make such ridiculous statements (believed at the time) that I couldn’t help laughing. And I couldn’t help noticing that at least two of the characters’ names, William of Baskerville and Adelmo of Otranto, hearken back to previous mystery and gothic fiction.

A New York Times reviewer from 1980 asserts that the entire novel refers to the time when it was written (the 1970s, I assume), so obviously he also found second meanings and playfulness in the novel.

The novel moves you along despite several learned discourses. The medieval mind also seems to like lists, and I have to admit skipping through several of those. This is at once a challenging and compelling read.

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Review 2548: The Shape of Water

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No, this is not a movie review. Andrea Camilleri is a Sicilian writer of the Inspector Montalbano series. The Shape of Water is the first in the series.

The body of a prominent politician with an impeccable reputation is found by two city street cleaners in his car in an area of town known for sex and drugs. (In Sicily, at least in the 90s, they had people who walk around and pick up trash? If only they would do that here.) Although it appears he died from natural causes, Inspector Montalbano thinks something is off. Lupanello died with his pants around his ankles. It is his wife who notices later that his underpants are on backwards. (This is the only thing that seemed unlikely to me—that the coroner wouldn’t notice that.)

Lupanello’s second almost immediately takes his position. Everyone wants Montalbano to close the case, but he asks for two more days.

Other complications turn up. One of the street cleaners finds an expensive necklace near the site. Also, the car apparently got to the site using an almost impossible route.

Montalbano is an honest cop, but he is cynically aware of the levels of corruption in city government. He has some slyly funny thoughts.

I wouldn’t say this novel is telegraphic in style, but portions of it are told only with telephone calls, and we don’t often learn what Montalbano is thinking. Also, Camilleri holds back some of the detective’s findings to the end. Cheating a little, but this series is very popular in Europe and so far seems promising. I like Montalbano, who has his own ideas about justice.

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Review 2473: My Father’s House

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Helen of She Read Novels has posted a note about Readers Imbibing Peril (RIP XIX), which I always forget about but usually participate in. As somewhat of a suspense novel, My Father’s House qualifies, so let this be the start of my participation this year. Most of the action is on Instagram at @PerilReaders, but I am not a great user of that.

My Father’s House is a book I read for my Walter Scott project, and it is also the first in O’Connor’s Roman Escape Line trilogy. It is based on the true story of the Escape Line, a group of people who helped captured soldiers and others escape from the Nazi occupation of Rome. In particular, it focuses on Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, one of the group’s founders.

After Rome is overrun by the Nazis, the Vatican gives Monsignor O’Flaherty a duty of ministering to British soldiers in Nazi captivity. Being an Irishman, he isn’t eager to do this duty. However, when he sees the condition of the men and the ease with which the Nazis break the Geneva Conventions, his manner to the Germans is such that he is removed from the duty. In this way, he comes to the attention of Obersturmbannführer Paul Hauptmann.

O’Flaherty then decides to form a group to help soldiers escape from the Nazis. The group becomes successful enough that Hauptmann begins receiving threatening communications from Himmler.

Much of the novel centers around a Rendimento, as the Choir, the central group that runs the Escape Line, calls their missions. The group has planned its mission for Christmas Eve (1943), thinking that Hauptmann won’t expect it, but in the last few days, Sam Derry, an escaped British major who would normally run it, is incapacitated. They begin training Enzo Angelucci instead.

The main focus of the novel is whether the mission will be successful, but the narration travels around in time and person via transcripts of interviews of several of the participants. In some respects, this structure is interesting, helping you get to know the other characters, but they didn’t all have distinct voices, and you didn’t get to know them well. There is also the disadvantage that the approach tends to interrupt the building suspense.

I thought the novel was very interesting in its subject matter. I’d never heard of the Escape Line. However, as the first of a trilogy, I’m not sure how much more there is to say, even though no doubt there are many adventures to recount. I didn’t feel as if I got to know most of the characters in the novel, not even the Monsignor.

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Review 2443: After Sappho

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I read After Sappho for my James Tait Black project. It is experimental, written in short vignettes that jump around in time and from person to person. It tells the stories of lesbian women, mostly literary figures, trying to make a place for themselves. It begins in the late 19th century with women fascinated by the poet Sappho. Some of them study Ancient Greek, some dress like ancient Greeks or re-enact ancient plays, some travel to Greece.

The novel is vividly written in first person plural or in third person, at times slyly ironic, sometimes engaged in word play, often invigorating and with lots of sexual metaphors. It is interesting, telling of repressive laws against women, particularly in Italy, and reporting actual aggressively misogynistic “scientific” or political statements by men. It goes on to tell of the accomplishments and tragedies and love affairs of its protagonists, largely ignoring the men in their lives. For example, from this novel, you wouldn’t know there was a Leonard Woolf, just a Vita Sackville-West.

Although I found the novel very interesting at first, there were so many characters that I couldn’t keep track of them or remember which events happened to which ones. I could only track the ones I was already familiar with. For example, the novel begins and ends with Lina Poletti, even though she disappears about halfway through, so she is obviously important to Schwartz, but by the end I couldn’t remember her. I felt like I needed a chart.

And yet, I feel that with more character definition, I might have remembered all of them, but these short vignettes that tell of an activity or something they said didn’t really provide a cohesive picture to me of what the women were like.

So, I applaud this novel’s daring devices, but they didn’t really work for me.

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Review 2324: Wonder Cruise

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Just a little note to say that my biography index page has been selected as one of the Top 30 Biography Blogs on the web by Feedspot. I received a nice email from the founder, Anuj Agarwal, informing of this.

I don’t usually read romance novels, but a few reviews made Wonder Cruise sound like it was more than that. I received the book, to see that it was being marketed as a romance. However, it turns out to be an untraditional representative of the genre.

Ann Clements is a naïve and inexperienced 35-year-old. Before taking a tedious job in a London office as a typist, she lived with her brother, a strait-laced and judgmental rector, and his dull family. Ann dresses dowdily and goes back and forth between her boring job and her dreary lodgings.

Then she wins a sweepstakes—half of a six-hundred-pound winnings from a bet on a horse made by her office mate. All that morning something had been making Ann think of a Mediterranean cruise, so before she loses her nerve, she books passage, after encouragement of her boss.

Her brother Cuthbert vociferously disapproves and even says Ann should give the money to her niece. When Ann is finally on board, she finds herself to be afraid of almost everything. She is seasick, has brought the wrong clothes, and is afraid to do something wrong. Her dining mates are dreadful, but on her first night she meets Oliver Banks, a man she met briefly the day she won the sweepstakes.

This novel mostly dwells on Ann’s self-development—her emergence from a timid woman who thinks she is already old and past chances of happiness to someone who is much more open and wants a chance at happiness.

It’s hard to explain why this novel is not a standard romance without giving too much away. I’ll just say that it takes some unexpected turns.

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Review 2278: The Romantic

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In the 19th century, Cashel Greville grows up in Ireland under the care of his aunt, who is governess to Sir Guy Stillwell’s family. But it’s clear to the reader, if not to Cashel, that all is not what it seems. Sure enough Cashel’s aunt moves them to Oxford, where they take up residence with Sir Guy under the name of Ross, and Cashel’s aunt Elspeth gives birth to twins, Hogan and Buckley. It is not until Cashel is 15 that Elspeth reveals she is his mother and Sir Guy his father.

Outraged, Cashel runs away from home and joins the army as a drummer boy. If you think I’m giving too much away, this all happens within the first 50 pages of this 450-page book, in which Cashel is on the field at Waterloo, hangs out with the Shelleys and Lord Byron, writes a best-selling novel but is cheated by his publisher and ends up in the Marshalsea, attempts to form a commune in Massachusetts, and so on. Oh yes, he also meets the love of his life in Ravenna, Italy, but she is married to a rich old man.

Cashel’s eventful and perhaps not altogether believable life (he claims to have discovered the source of the Nile before Speke and to have thwarted an antiquities smuggling scheme with the help of Sir Richard Burton) is supposedly documented by an autobiography and other papers that came into Boyd’s possession. With this claim, Boyd begins another of his “whole life” novels, maybe the most picaresque and least believable.

I usually like Boyd’s novels—in fact, some of them I have loved—but I had trouble connecting with this one. I’m not sure why, especially since it received uniformly positive reviews. It is fast moving despite its length. Maybe too fast. I didn’t feel like I got to know Cashel or really any of the characters. All of the women are ciphers, even Cashels’ great love. Boyd spends more pages on a sexual encounter with her than on Cashel’s marriage and its subsequent breakup.

Given Boyd’s plans for the adventures in this novel, maybe he needed to make it a lot longer.

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Review 2203: Nora

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Nora is based on the movements of Nora Barnacle and James Joyce and on their letters, many of which, apparently, were quite explicit.

On an acquaintance of only a few, heated months, Nora Barnacle goes off with James Joyce to live in Europe despite his not believing in marriage. In 1904, she is 20 and has been working in a Dublin hotel after fleeing her family in Galway.

The life she takes on is difficult. Not only are they very poor and have no permanent abode after the job Joyce was promised at the Berlitz school in Zürich turns out to be a scam, but Joyce himself is difficult. He is a drinker and a spendthrift who buys gifts with the rent money. He is a jealous man who may not be faithful himself and likes to hear about the men Nora knew before him. He is selfish and superstitious, usually certain of his own abilities but not always.

As their life continues, Joyce gets work but never stays satisfied with it. He quits gainful employment to pursue fanciful projects. They have to borrow from his friends and family and move from place to place. Although he is gaining literary fame, he has trouble getting his books published without censorship. He leaves Nora home alone with the children to go drinking with friends and sycophants. Then there is the war, and his failing eyesight.

This is a fascinating depiction of a complex relationship. Aside from the difficulties of living with Joyce and a peripatetic life, Nora has to deal with family pressures and a mentally ill child. Yet her relationship with Joyce is one of fierce passion and love. Although I am not comfortable with explicit sex, I was otherwise wrapped up in this story.

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Review 2194: The Marriage Portrait

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Maggie O’Farrell’s latest novel is loosely based on the life of Lucrezia di Cosimo de Medici, who in 1560 at the age of 15 went to Ferrara to take up her married life with Alfonso II d’Este and was dead within a year, rumored to have been murdered by her husband. None of this is spoiler information. It’s explained before the novel begins.

At the beginning of the novel Lucrezia arrives at a remote country fortress with only her husband and some of his men. Her personal maids have been left behind. Lucrezia is sure her husband is going to murder her.

Then the novel returns to trace her childhood and young womanhood in the Medici family. There, she and her sisters are brought up entirely confined to a few rooms of the house and occasionally allowed outside. On the other hand, she has the example of her parents’ marriage, still loving, with both parents collaborating even in political decisions.

Lucrezia is not a favorite child. She has a core of resistance in her, and she prefers painting small, detailed pictures from nature to social pursuits. Fatefully, when she is ten, she briefly meets her older sister Maria’s fiancé, Alfonso II, heir to the Ferrara dukedom. When Maria dies before her marriage, Alfonso says he is open to taking Lucrezia instead, although she is only thirteen.

At fifteen, she marries Alfonso and travels with him to Ferrara to begin her marriage. At first, all seems well. His initial encounter with her was reassuring and he seems kind. Of course, she has to deal with knowing no one except her maid and not even understanding the servants’ dialect. Clothing and hair styles are different. And although she has much more freedom, she begins to learn that Alfonso’s ideas of marriage aren’t like her parents’. He wants her to obey him immediately no matter what he asks, and he doesn’t tell her what’s going on or want her to know anything. She appears to have no responsibilities, so she spends her time painting or socializing with his two sisters.

But slowly she learns that she only has one role in the family—to produce an heir. And Alfonso is known never to have fathered a child. Also, Alfonso is not as benign as he first appeared.

I found this novel absolutely fascinating with its convincing portrait of life in Renaissance Italy. The descriptions are detailed, and although Lucrezia is naïve, she is also a person who notices things. With growing dread, we observe her trying to make sense of this new world, with almost no preparation from her parents. As usual, O’Farrell is a deft writer who knows how to keep readers pinned to the page. I loved this one.

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Review 2114: Lost Hearts in Italy

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I absolutely loved Andrea Lee’s Red Island House—in fact, it was on my Best of the Year list this last year—but I think I would have liked Lost Hearts in Italy better if I hadn’t read the other book first. I make this comment because Lee seems to be rehashing the same story except the Red Island House also dealt with other themes.

In Red Island House, a young, beautiful American mixed race academic is married to an older, uneducated, self-made wealthy Italian businessman, a marriage that seemed to me inexplicable. In Lost Hearts in Italy, a young, beautiful American mixed race journalist meets an older, uneducated, self-made Italian billionaire when she is on her way to join her young, beautiful nice husband who loves her in their new home in Rome. Mira doesn’t even seem attracted to Zenin (she calls him by his last name as the heroine of Red Island House calls her husband), but eventually she begins having an affair with him, one that (this is no spoiler—it’s clear from the beginning) spoils her marriage with Nick. The novel moves backward and forward in time between 1986 and 2005, examining the lasting repercussions of Mira’s actions.

The only difference I can see between Zenin and Senna of Red Island House is that Zenin is tall and Senna is short. Lee is obviously obsessed by this relationship. Although she is an excellent writer, I think Red Island House, with its themes of identity, colonialism and the responsibility of the rich to the poor, has more to offer than just a dissection of this relationship. In Lost Hearts in Italy, Mira is like a moth drawn to a flame except she knows she is doing something against her own nature. My question was, then why did she do it? Zenin is not an attractive character at all. It’s inexplicable.

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