Devastated by the sudden death of her father when she is in her early thirties, author Helen Macdonald finds herself lost, overwhelmed, and dealing with a “kind of madness.” She and her father were especially close. They had loved walking for hours in the woods of Hampshire, and she had always wanted to become a falconer. Her parents, sympathetic, had even allowed her, after much pleading, to accompany a group of falconers hunting with goshawks in the field when she was only twelve. In this brilliantly described and vivid depiction of the meaning of life and death, Macdonald connects with readers in unique ways as Macdonald trains a huge goshawk to come to her hand, hunt, and live a relatively wild life, and it’s hard to imagine anyone who will not be changed by this incredibly moving work: “In my time with Mabel, I’ve learned how you feel more human once you have known…what it is like to be not. And I have learned, too, the danger that comes in mistaking the wildness we give a thing for the wildness that animates it…Their inhumanity…has nothing to do with us at all.”
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Maurizio de Giovanni’s sixth entry in the series of Neapolitan novels starring Commissario Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi will delight fans of the series and, I suspect, send new readers thronging to bookstores to get some of his earlier novels. Set in 1932, during the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini, this novel shows Mussolini as he consolidates his power and imposes his fascism more broadly. The action begins when Viper, the most beautiful prostitute at Il Paradiso, a bordello, is murdered on the job. As her professional time was almost completely occupied with only two clients who have alibis – a wealthy man who specializes in the sale of religious statuettes and trinkets and a young man from her hometown who wants to marry her – the investigation soon widens to the whole of Naples. De Giovanni’s novels have become increasingly sophisticated and complex in their structure in the course of this series. At the same time, his comfort with his odd group of characters, his relaxed narrative tone, and his sometimes humorous details provide a teasing narrative which will keep readers smiling and guessing throughout. Readers new to de Giovanni will find that they gain most of the background they need through the narrative, though long-time readers will enjoy this even more. Everyone will agree, I suspect, that this is de Giovanni’s best novel yet – great fun!
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