Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions by Mario Giordano

[Trans. by John Brownjohn]

Rating: 3 & ½ Stars

Auntie Poldi is newly transplanted to Sicily from her native Munich. Despondent from the recent death of her husband and several financial setbacks, Poldi has decided to drink herself to death. And she has chosen Sicily as the perfect backdrop for her demise. The mystery begins when her young handyman is found with his face nearly blown apart by an old mafia-style weapon. The only problem is that there aren’t any Mafiosi in Giordano’s modern Sicily. But even if there were, Poldi is not the kind of woman to back down from them.

Auntie Poldi is an unconventional detective by any consideration. A grieving widow with a lust for life and a weakness for handsome policemen, she lurches around Sicily in a regularly inebriated condition. Still, she always has enough clarity to ask the right questions; and the chutzpah to bother the wrong kind of people with her relentless demands for answers. Grief and depression always loom in the background of her mind. Nevertheless, Poldi has a vitality that has her greeting life with her usual, “Namaste!”

Perhaps like me, you too have bought into the clichés about Italy and the Italian people – their joie de vivre, love of famila, love of food, their dramatic flair,  and, the ardor of their romantic affairs. Well, make no mistake about it; this book continues to perpetuate all those stereotypes. Reading this novel has left me craving marzipan, and Sicilian style almond-milk.

Poldi is assisted in her investigations by her quartet of helpful in-laws; and her sounding board is her nephew who is wrestling with himself to conjure up a literary masterpiece that seems a strange hybrid of ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ and ‘Odyssey’. This nephew also does double-duty as the first-person narrator of this novel – an unwieldy and needless technical device. The climax is unabashedly deus ex machina. But these minor flaws aside, the book is an undemanding charmer; its most winsome attribute being its eccentric, loveable heroine. Namaste, Poldi!

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

Rating: 3 & ½ Stars

One of the strengths of this book is its straightforward narrative. Published first in 1925, the story chronicles the experiences of a young American, Frederic Henry, caught in the thick of World War I. Lieutenant Henry (‘Tenente’) serves in the ambulance corps of the Italian army. The book is as much about love, as it is about war.

Frederic is half-hearted about the war, and in no mind for love when he first meets Catherine Barkley, an English nurse. Both his mind and heart are changed fairly soon, though Hemingway is more eloquent about Henry’s growing disillusionment with the seemingly endless campaign than he is in developing the relationship between Frederic and Catherine. The reader must infer their own reasons beyond what is stated in the book: that Catherine is beautiful, and ‘a grand girl’, and that she is lonely and grieving. In the despair of war, perhaps that is enough.

After the Battle of Caporetto and the ensuing Italian retreat, Henry finally decides that he will make ‘a separate peace’. He deserts the Italian army and pursues Catherine to Stresa. Catherine is by now pregnant with his child, and together, the two escape to Switzerland. There, they enjoy a blissful idyll, that alas, proves short-lived.

Hemingway seems to know what he’s talking about when he writes about war. Well, he should. ‘A Farewell to Arms’ is not autobiographical, but several incidents were based on the author’s own experiences in the Italian ambulance brigade, and being wounded during service. Many of the key characters were inspired by men and women he met during that period. Catherine Barkley was the fictional alter ego of a nurse called Agnes Von Kurowsky. The affair between Hemingway and Kurowsky did not end tragically, but came to a more mundane conclusion. While the character of Henry has a force and presence that rings true, Barkley is a fairly two-dimensional and insipid romantic lead. At the end of the book, there is not much we know about her, other than that she for no particular reason, makes Henry her raison d’être and has a tendency to fatuously state that things are ‘grand’ even when they very obviously are not.

But whatever the deficiencies in Hemingway’s take on love, he makes up for it with a perspective on war that is clear-eyed and authentic - its chaos, stupidity, madness, and the collateral damage it inflicts. Hemingway strips away any pretensions of glory in his account of people displaced, in the awarding of military ‘honors’, and the treatment of service personnel in wartime. His style of prose is minimal – terse yet effective. While his writing is unsentimental, his descriptions of natural landscapes are a thing of beauty in themselves; the immutable loveliness of nature stands serenely untouched by mankind’s self-destruction.

The Little World of Don Camillo by Giovanni Guareschi

[Translated from the Italian by Una Vincenzo Troubridge]

Rating: 4 Stars

It was by sheer accident that I came across this lovely little book many years ago. I found it in the small library of the small town that I was living in at that time, sorted under a note that read, ‘Librarian’s Recommendation’. I fell in love with the book, and the writer’s style all at once.

Guareschi, a WW II veteran and plyer of multiple trades, was the author and illustrator of the Don Camillo books, of which there are six. ‘The Little World of Don Camillo’ initiates the series with our introduction to the feisty priest Don Camillo, and his rival, Mayor Peppone of the Communist Party.

Less of a novel and more a connecting suite of short stories, the plot draws on the various clashes between Camillo and Peppone – be it Camillo’s refusal to baptize Peppone’s infant son with a name like ‘Lenin’; or, their feuding soccer-match; or, the ensuing ruckus when the Bishop visits their village.

Though they may lock horns in their battles to win the heart and soul of their community, these two ideological stalwarts have more in common than they want to admit. Despite his tendency to give fiery orations against the Church and its appointees, Peppone is at heart as much an Italian Catholic as anyone else in the village. Devout Don Camillo, though a man of God, is as free with administering lessons with his fists and feet, as he is with his sermons. But if the circumstances call for it, they will work together for their excitable and boisterous flock/compatriots.

This underlying conviction, that men of good intentions can, and will, put aside their differences for the greater good is the essence of the book – one of the reasons for its charm, that, and the benevolent take on humanity as evinced by Camillo’s confidante, the receptor of all his musings – the conversational Christ, who looks on with an equally tolerant eye on Camillo and Peppone alike.

From the Land of the Moon by Milena Agus

(Translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein)

 

Rating: 3 Stars

            Milena Agus’ enticing little novel was an award-winner in her native Italy, before going on to become a European best-seller. It has the magic, yearning, and bitter-sweetness of ‘the principal thing’ that is its subject – Love.

            Most of the characters in the book are unnamed. The narrator, a young woman, tells the story of her grandmother, interspersed with recollections of her own mother and father, and her extended family. The grandmother was the despair of her parents – having no marriage prospects at the venerable age of thirty; having scandalized the villagers with her inappropriately passionate poetry to any young man who shows casual interest in her; and, in fact causing others to doubt her sanity. The parents gratefully accept the offer of marriage from an out-of-town widower who is taking shelter with them during the time of Nazi-occupied Italy.

            Grandmother, however, was not over-whelmed by the proposal. It is not marriage she seeks. What this wildly romantic woman craves is Love. She resigns herself to the inevitable as best as she can, coming to some terms of agreement with Grandfather. But her life is changed forever when she goes for a medical treatment at a spa, and meets a fellow convalescent – the Veteran.

            This slim novel raises a lot of weighty questions. How do we know it’s Love if it doesn’t match our concept of Love? If we don’t know, will we miss it when it’s staring us right in the face? Not recognizing it for what it is, are we to be engaged in a futile quest for what we already have? Or do we waste away longing for a mirage, when life is beckoning us with all its robustness?

            The book’s surprising, revelatory conclusion clears existing doubts, but raises a host of new ones in the process. With its vivid characterization and lush, erotic style, it evokes la dolce vita that we’ve come to associate with Italy.

In Tuscany

In Tuscany by Frances Mayes

Rating: 3 Stars

Frances Mayes divides this book into seven chapters, the first titled ‘Baci’ (Kisses). This whole book is an ardent love-note laden with ‘baci’ to this land that has enchanted her.

Having written other books about this region of Italy, the author seems to find ever-new wonders to revel in and share – be it the many festivals, the ‘piazza’, the Tuscan kitchen, or the Tuscan countryside. The appeal of the book is greatly enhanced by the photography of Bob Krist, which captures images of a sun-drenched landscape awash in shades of amber and gold. As with all true travelogues, we’re also given a smattering of the Art, Architecture, and History of the land, along with engaging anecdotes of everyday life in Tuscany. My favorite one is about St. Lorenzo, the patron saint of cooks, who told his torturers as they were roasting him alive, “Turn me over, I’m done on this side.”

Clearly, the author finds Tuscany a feast for the senses. But as many other visitors have testified, the Italian experience is especially a gastronomic tour de force. The Tuscan table is a true carnivore’s delight, with its various savory meats, augmented by exotic delicacies like rabbit, wild boar, frogs’ legs, etc. Vegetarians, vegans, and those of timid palate, however, may find visiting Tuscany a slimming experience. As the author points out, the Italians themselves seem to have no need of any low-calorie diet. They have other tricks up their sleeves, besides red wine and olive oil.

Ms. Mayes has a loving, grateful appreciation for all things Tuscan, whether it’s the food, the people, the sunlight, the stones, the sky, the grass, or the flowers. Her finely developed aesthetic sense finds exquisite expression in the chapter titled ‘La Belleza’ (Beauty).

While one can hardly fault the writer for being enamored of this gorgeous land, I did find something odd. As a fairly recent immigrant to the U.S., I’m still wonder-struck by this vast country of large-hearted people. Ms. Mayes, on several occasions, draws comparisons between Tuscany and her own homeland – America. Inevitably, the good ole’ U.S. of A. seems to fall short of her standards. Does the author find so little to appreciate in America the Beautiful? After all, one of the most admirable things about the Tuscans is the love they have for their land, family, and neighbors.

Do we need to look at a country with the eyes of an outsider to value all that’s good about it? Perhaps what is needed, is a concomitant sense of belonging and yet not belonging, to experience on a daily basis the feel of joyous discovery of our own humble hometowns.

Blood from a Stone

Blood from a Stone by Donna Leon
(a Commissario Guido Brunnetti Mystery)

Rating: 2 Stars

I was looking forward to blissfully soaking myself in a good old-fashioned cloak and dagger novel, but initially found this one a little tepid. More used to the rat-a-tat pace of the American crime caper, or the sinister undercurrents of the English countryside, it took me a while to get used to the well-read, genial hero of this Venetian mystery.

Guido Brunnetti, devoted family man and lover of good food, is a far cry from the stereotypical hard-boiled, macho cop hero. The story is well written, with a thought-provoking plot that takes time to unravel.

My main quibble is that our hero is reduced to being a frustrated witness when the final pieces of the puzzle fall into place. Neither he, nor the reader, has the satisfaction of declaring whole-heartedly, “Case closed!” Still, I think the series holds promise. Next time, I might try one of the better-reviewed books of Ms. Leon’s like, “Doctored Evidence” or “Uniform Justice”. Until then, Ciao Guido!