In this old-fashioned, “once-upon-a-time-in-the-old-country” saga set in northern Italy, author Vittorio Massimo Manfredi introduces the Bruni family of farmers. Living in the rural hills outside of Bologna, Callisto and Clerice, parents of seven sons and two daughters, have worked the same land as generations of their ancestors. When World War I begins, the war changes the very heart of the nation, not just because of the hundreds of thousands of young men killed, wounded, or taken prisoner, but because of the totality of the horrors for every person in the country. The years of Fascism form the second part of the novel’s structure, with each of the brothers and their friends responding differently to the rise of Mussolini and his dictatorship. The third part of the novel features the next generation of Bruni sons as they deal with the many factions within Italy during World War II. Various Resistance groups fight against the Fascist Republican Army, or its extreme wing, the paramilitary Black Brigades, but the Resistenza itself is fragmented. This novel has something for everyone, and that is both its joy and its limitation. The fact that there is not a moment of boredom in the entire novel attests to the author’s prodigious narrative abilities, but the thirty-year focus results in a novel that is diffuse and sometimes unfocused, and the conclusion itself peters out.
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Posted in 9-2012 Reviews, Belgium, Biography, Democratic Republic of Congo, England, Exploration, Historical, Ireland and Northern Ireland, Literary, Peru, Social and Political Issues on Aug 16th, 2012
Mario Vargas Llosa opens this fictionalized biography of Roger Casement as Casement awaits a decision on his application for clemency from a death sentence. As he reconstructs Casement’s life as a reformer and advocate for benighted native populations being exploited by various countries and corporations, he returns again and again to Casement throughout the novel as he rethinks every aspect of his life. Casement concludes, in most cases, that he acted honorably – or tried to. An advocate for indigenous populations exploited by governments and corporations, Casement has revealed the horrors of the Congo under the rule of Leopold II, and of Amazonia at the turn of the century, when a Peruvian entrepreneur controls vast quantities of land over which he has total control. His rubber company has many London investors. Ultimately, Casement believes that the Irish who are being ruled by the British have similar problems to indigenous populations, and he acts against the British and must face the consequences.
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In her debut novel, Out of It, British Palestinian author Selma Dabbagh creates a family from Gaza which reflects all the stresses, conflicts, and competing philosophies endemic to that world, a small strip of land along the Mediterranean coast in the westernmost corner of Israel, bordering Egypt. Creating a well-differentiated Gaza family which lives their lives and join friends in numerous activities, both political and otherwise, the reader learns about life in Gaza and the various factions complicating any unified action by any Palestinian “government.” By showing the action through members of a single family with differing points of view, the author makes many issues come alive in new ways and shows how they affect family dynamics. And though the issues and the different political factions attempting to deal with them are sometimes a bit muddled for those of us who are not already familiar with all the various groups in Gaza, her focus is clearly on those issues. We come to know the characters within the limits of their points of view, and they and their fates become part of the message rather than ends in themselves. The novel is enlightening and often entertaining, descriptive and often memorable, and exciting but often horrific, with few hints that any real solution is forthcoming.
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Fans of the previous five novels in the Quirke series by “Benjamin Black,” the pen name of Booker Prize-winning author John Banville, will celebrate the publication of this sixth novel of the Dublin-based series, set in the 1950s. Continuing all the main characters from previous novels, Black spends little time rehashing the sometimes sordid history of their relationships. Instead, he picks up where he left off with A Death in Summer, with few references to the characters’ backgrounds from previous novels. Quirke become involved with an investigation at the beginning of this novel when Victor Delahaye, the main partner in Delahaye and Clancy, an old company with a flourishing automobile repair business, invites the young son of his partner Jack Clancy to accompany him on a sail. Young Davy Clancy hates sailing, and has no idea why Jack, whom he does not know well, makes such an issue of having him as the only passenger. This trip does not make Davy like sailing any better. When he and Delahaye are far from land, Delahaye pulls out a gun and kills himself. Another death occurs shortly afterward. Those who have read the previous novels may be less enchanted with this one than those who are coming to it “fresh.”
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Daniel Silva, who was a journalist for years before he became a novelist, has always taken care to create plots that relate directly to current political and historical realities. In this novel Silva goes way beyond the facts that we all understand from the media, elucidating the complexities and the heartfelt commitments of both the Arabs and the Jews to preserving “their own” piece of the land in what is now Israel, and especially Jerusalem. Allon is restoring “The Deposition of Christ,” widely regarded as Caravaggio’s finest painting, working at night in the Vatican, when the body of a female curator in the antiquities department is found beneath the Michelangelo-designed dome of the basilica. While this is being investigated, Allon learns from Shimon Pazner at the Israeli Embassy that Hezbollah, aided by Iran, may be planning a major attack on some Israeli site in Europe. Eventually, these two plots coincide, but not before Silva has explored the complexities of the financial dealings at the Vatican; the personal alliances within the Vatican and within Rome itself; the financial and cultural interconnections between the Palestinians, Hezbollah, Iran, and the antiquities market; and the extreme actions suicide bombers are willing to commit to advance their agenda. No compromise seems possible in dealing with any of these issues as the reader becomes newly aware of the increasing tensions of the area and the unlikelihood that any solution, other than war, will be the result.
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