‘The Shape of Water’

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Andrea Camilleri, Inspector Montalbano, Lunch, Poirot, Sicily, Venice, whodunits

Our creative writing teacher would have not have allowed us to interrupt the narrative simply to describe the meal our hero was sitting down to enjoy. No, no, I hear, you’re breaking the flow, this isn’t relevant to the plot, you’ll lose your reader.

I’ve just read my first Inspector Montalbano story. I’d seen a few episodes on TV and thought I’d try one of the books. And, sure enough, just as on TV he goes to his favourite restaurant and discusses the menu with his host, here we also break for lunch. And it’s great. We are, after all, in Italy. Lunch is important. A few years ago on an anniversary trip to Venice my wife and I had foolishly allowed ourselves to be transported to the glass island of Murano; we were fearful of how we could possibly escape the inevitable hard sell at the end of the tour without too much damage to our bank balance, but to our relief we were spared because it was LUNCHTIME ON SUNDAY. All the hard sellers just disappeared, and we slipped away unnoticed.

So eat on, Salvo. The nearest I can think of a parallel in English whodunits would be Poirot stopping his ratiocination to lovingly prepare a meal for Captain Hastings or Inspector Japp.

The Shape of Water, by Andrea Camilleri (translated by Stephen Sartarelli) is, as I’ve said, my first Montalbano. A complex and occasionally comic Sicilian whodunit. It wasn’t possible for me to work out the solution – we get the clues at the same time as the good Salvo himself (and sometimes afterwards). It was a quick read – with generous spacing on the page, and lots of dialogue. As well as lunch we get glimpses of Sicily, and a picture of corruption in local government and of the bureaucratic confusion of the various Italian law enforcement agencies. There are some helpful notes at the end explaining especially Sicilian and Italian references.

Silvio Luparello, a well-regarded engineer and local bigwig, is found dead of a heart attack in his car in the Pasture, a squalid area known for prostitution. Our hero smells a rat: Luparello had just three days before become Provincial Secretary, leader of the Council, and after years of careful politicking to achieve that dizzy (and profitable) height would not have risked his reputation thus. Pressure to close the case from the great and the good (including the local Bishop) only encourage Montalbano to continue his investigation.

There’s a complex cast of characters, including rubbish collectors, Mafiosi, journalists, various beautiful women, and other leading politicians.  One scene I especially enjoyed takes place in an abandoned chemical factory, both for the description of the place and for the comic action that takes place there. As the blurb says, “Picking his way through a labyrinth of high-comedy corruption, delicious meals, vendetta firepower, and carefully planted false clues, Montalbano can be relied on, whatever the cost, to get to the heart of the matter.”

A good read. I’ll read others. First published in 1994. English translation published by Picador.

Buon appetito!

The Best Novel of the 20th Century?

Tags

Great Novels, Sicily, The Leopard

Although you won’t find it on many lists, The Leopard by Giuseppi Tomasi di Lampedusa has been described not only as one of the most important Italian novels and in the top ten of historical novels, but also as “the best novel of the 20^th Century”.  Set in Sicily at the time of the Risorgimento — the unification of Italy in 1860 — it explores in exquisite detail one man’s confrontation with change and mortality.

The man in question is Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, head of one of the great landed families in Sicily, the personification of the Gattopardo (actually a serval rather than a leopard) which adorns the Salina coat of arms. Despite the blond hair, blue eyes and height that bespeak Norman heritage, the Prince is a typical Sicilian: taciturn, observant, pragmatic. In between hunting, astronomy and occasional visits to a mistress he rules his family and his estates as any feudal lord might have done. Yet he recognises that change is not only inevitable, but necessary if the family’s influence is to survive. ‘Everything needs to change so everything can stay the same’, as his much-loved, but penniless nephew Tancredi Falconeri tells him.

As Tancredi fights for the new order, the Prince breaks with tradition and invites Don Calogero, a self-made man on the rise, to dinner. Calogero brings his beautiful daughter, Angelica. This provides almost the entire action of the novel: Tancredi, hitherto destined for the Prince’s own daughter, Concetta, falls in love with Angelica. The Prince, however distastefully and to Concetta’s lasting sorrow, promotes the match both for Angelica’s wealth and her father’s standing in the new regime.

The novel was controversial on publication (and note, fellow writers, that it struggled to find a publisher). It was attacked from both right and left for its portrayal of upper class decadence and the lives of the Sicilian working class. And yet, it prevailed to win the Strega Prize and to be revered among many famous writers. Its success lies perhaps in its precise and evocative portrayal of a man in search of spiritual anchors as his world changes as well as of the timeless depiction of Sicily itself. Indeed, ‘depiction’ is perhaps too small a word. The island’s character is revealed in ‘…the deep gloom of Sicilian summer’, and Palermo’s ‘…sense of death which not even the vibrant Sicilian light could ever manage to disperse.’. Even the style and pace of the writing conveys the ‘voluptuous torpor’ of Sicilian life.

And yet, the novel comes to a rather rushed and unsatisfactory conclusion. There is a jump from 1862 to the Prince’s death in 1885 and another to 1910 when we find the Prince’s daughters, all spinsters in their seventies, living in somewhat reduced circumstances. They are visited by the widowed Angelica, but we never find out what happened to Tancredi. And they tussle with the Church over the standing of their chapel. Although I’ve said little about it, Catholicism also pervades the novel, but it’s not until the end that the Salinas appear subject to the Church, their last shred of influence having been torn away.

At only 200 pages, The Leopard is a gem, almost a miracle of a novel. I would include it in my list of great novels of all time, but would be hard pressed to name any one novel ‘The Best”. Nominations, anyone?