Very much in the tradition of her previous Neapolitan Quartet, author Elena Ferrante delves deeply into the psychology, culture, and social and romantic goals of characters whom the reader comes to know from within. In the course of the novel, she first presents Giovanna, age twelve, her family, and their friends – those living elegantly at the top of the hill in Naples – and sets up contrasts between their lives with those who live at the bottom of the hill, a much poorer area in which life is far more difficult. When Giovanna decides she wants to meet her mysterious aunt Vittoria, the family pariah, considered a “demon” living at the bottom of the hill, the family’s interrelationships become more complex. Over the next five years, they meet several times, and when the marriage of Giovanna’s parents begins to crack, Vittoria tells Giovanna to pay close attention to their arguments and actions to learn what is happening behind the scenes. Complex details involving all of these characters give new meaning to the “lying lives” of the adults. While these revelations are occurring, Giovanna herself is growing up and feeling her own sexual interests come alive, adding intensity to the atmosphere and more tension in Giovanna’s life. Those who have loved the Neapolitan Quartet will find this novel a good counterpart with its emphasis on psychological development, the inner thoughts and quandaries of its main character(s), and the constant reliving of the past and its mistakes. Book clubs will have a fine time analyzing the “adult” Giovanna as she makes a life-changing decision on the last pages.
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With the latest entry in his crime series set in Pizzofalcone, a precinct high atop a hill in Naples, author Maurizio de Giovanni adds another layer to the characters who have made themselves so intriguing to readers of the previous four novels in this series. With a title like Puppies, this latest Pizzofalcone mystery sounds more like a “cozy” than a noir mystery. De Giovanni, however, is clever. He draws in readers with the action here, starting with the last thoughts of a dying woman, followed by a section in which two people are talking about leaving something – not identified as human or animal – outside in an alley where it will get noticed without delay. The novel then focuses on officer Romano, a hulk who has trouble controlling his temper. As Romano leaves for work, he passes the alley with garbage cans, just as a “broken doll” starts to cry. A newborn baby has been left with the trash. By the time the police get to the scene of the baby, Romano has opened his shirt and placed the baby on his chest to warm it and help it breathe. Before long, he has been asked to give the weak baby a name to help it be “real” while in the hospital. No puppies are mentioned at all until about fifty pages into the book, by which time several plot threads and all six characters are being featured. Gradually, the reader comes to understand that “puppies” are symbolic of lives that cannot survive without help. De Giovanni has done it again.
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In his darkest and most “noir” novel yet, Massimo Carlotto continues his “Alligator” series, featuring Marco Buratti, a man haunted by the evil which consumes the society in which he tries to live. In touch with members of organized crime and its violence throughout Europe, he also understands crime on a local scale among the people he knows in his home of Padua, Italy. The local police department knows Buratti well for many reasons, and they sometimes ask him for help on their most challenging cases – some of which feature crimes within their own department and the implication that their request for help is something he must not refuse. With over thirty characters, some of them known by aliases, a complex plot which is developed in Padua, Bern, Vienna, and Munich, and two narrators giving conflicting information regarding crimes and responsibility, this is a challenging novel. The violence is fully described and sometimes shocking, and there are no people here who can be considered true heroes. Buratti occasionally gets twinges of conscience regarding deaths he has witnessed, but he is, he says, very aware of “the difference between justice and vengeance.” His own idea of justice “didn’t involve cops and courts,” especially when he and his parters were “playing multiple tables at a time.”
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In this experimental novel by French author Celia Houdart, the action mimics, to some extent, a crime novel, though the style of the narrative is unique. Marian, a judge in Pisa, Italy, and a central character, is about to preside over the hearing of a man accused of shooting the prefect of Pisa three years ago, a crime for which the victim is still plagued with memory problems and breathing difficulties. Marco Ipranossian, an Armenian, was arrested at the train station in Florence, fifty miles away, a month after the shooting, and was found with some compromising paperwork tucked inside his shirt. Now, after three years, the time has finally arrived for the legal case to begin against him. From the time of Ipranossian’s arrest, however, the prefect-victim has stated that Marco Ipranossian does not really look like the man he remembers as the shooter and is much thinner. A juror also sees “little resemblance” between Marco Ipranossian and the photo of a suspect that appeared in the local newspaper at the time of Ipranossian’s arrest.Some characters who appear to be power players here turn out to be almost irrelevant, while others prove to be significant players. Ultimately, the MacGuffiins are identified and vanish quietly, and the reader, too, begins to enjoy the new understandings which appear almost without warning, establishing this novel as not only unique but carefully crafted in its literary style. Author Celia Houdart takes some big chances with her approach to this novel, which grows on the reader as s/he spends more time with the author and her perspective.
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“Tell me the truth,” I said.
“What truth?” he echoed. He was making a rapid sketch
in his notebook and now he showed me what it was: a long,
long train with a big cloud of black smoke swirling over it,
and himself leaning out of a window to wave a handkerchief.
I shot him between the eyes. – Opening lines of this book.
In The Dry Heart, her first novel after the war, author Natalia Ginzburg deals with the “world writ small” telling the story of the marriage of an uncommunicative and unnamed woman married to an even more uncommunicative man. Less than a hundred words after the novel opens, the conclusion is revealed: “I shot him between the eyes,” a statement of great drama because of the context’s lack of drama. Using the woman’s point of view, the author carefully shifts back and forth in time, illustrating what happens, and more importantly, what often does not happen, in this marriage. Matching her realistic style to the undramatic nature of the marriage, Ginzburg slowly builds the tensions, eventually revealing everything the reader needs to know about the past which will explain the bold admission of murder in the first few words.
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