Mauro Palermo has been quickest off the mark for us, here is his view of That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana which he read in the original Italian.
“Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana” is not a “giallo”, at least not as we normally mean it.
There's a crime, there's the dead, there's an inquiry, but there's not a real crime plot. This is a rare case of novel where the plot is subordinated to writing.
The author uses the story to have an excuse to play with words. The writing is outstanding, used to outline the different characters and also to express what the characters think or feel about the others.
In this way the use of different dialects (or of a higher or lower level of Italian, from very basic to solemn) contributes to give life to each character. (I wonder how this is reproduced in the English translation).
In the end it is not so important to discover who killed Liliana, the aim of the author being bringing us inside Rome in the late twenties and making us understand what everyday life was there at that time. And we dive into this world, feeling like we are home and everything that happens around us seems real.
Really looking forward to read along with you lot, this club is a great idea! Don't know a thing about That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana but I'm looking forward to it now -- Raymond Chandler made me very fond of crime novels in which plot takes a backseat to writing.
ReplyDeleteAlso, FWIW, an endorsement of Carofiglio for a future choice. I'm a big reader of crime/hard-boiled novels, and find him pretty special, particularly the earlier stuff in his series.