Any Requests Part III
Categories: Mystery & Suspense , Rediscoveries , Staff Picks , Nonfiction , Fiction
Here are the rest of the titles I previewed last week.
The political love story is Letter to Lorenzo, by Amanda Prantera. Julia, the English wife of a wealthy young Roman, is devastated when she is told that he has been killed by a car bomb. Her agonizing grief for her husband is complicated by her bewilderment: why would Red Brigade terrorists kill her husband when the two of them were known for their own socialist convictions? It must be a neo-fascist plot to discredit him. But careful, relentless interrogation by the investigating magistrate reveals that the police think her husband was a terrorist transporting the bomb himself. Julia’s world is turned upside down again. Her grief is powerfully portrayed, and her painfully honest attempts to understand her marriage and her politics are utterly persuasive, as is the subtle characterization of the magistrate who forces her into this possible reconsideration of everything she believed.
The father-son story about a child prodigy is Isaac and His Devils, by Fernanda Eberstadt. Sam Hooker gives up his dreams of graduate school and future greatness to teach at a high school in his little New Hampshire town when his wife becomes pregnant. But rather than resenting the son for whom he sacrificed his ambitions, Sam finds himself adoring the boy. Nearsighted, asthmatic, and elephantine, Isaac shines with genius and a furious desire to understand everything. Sam winces for his son’s innocent enthusiasm and tries to protect him. But protection may not be what genius needs—Isaac’s no-nonsense mother plays an unexpected part in sending Isaac out into the great world. The novel absolutely boils over with life, and it has a splendid but utterly different sequel, When the Sons of Heaven Meet the Daughters of the Earth, set in the rarefied art world of 1980s New York, which the inimitable Isaac tries to take by storm.
The thoughtful novel of Renaissance Florence is The Notebook of Gismondo Cavalletti, by R. M. Lamming. Its narrator has put down his reflections in a secret notebook in order to clarify his thoughts about a difficult decision he must make. Gismondo was a peasant boy adopted by a wealthy, childless merchant who educated him like a son. But two things happened: the merchant’s barren wife bore an heir after all, and a disfiguring growth began to sprout on the side of Gismondo’s classically beautiful face. For years, Gismondo has lived on the margins of his benefactor’s careless beneficence and society’s leering curiosity. Now the merchant is dying, and Gismondo knows he will be thrown on the streets by his adoptive brother, who taunts him for his ugliness and loyal earnestness. How can Gismondo save himself? And how can he reconcile the beliefs that he has been raised in—that man is the pinnacle of perfection in God’s world—with his own ugliness and his patron’s betrayal? This reserved and lonely character facing painful disillusionment may bring to mind the narrator of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day.
The quirky mystery is James Colbert’s Skinny Man. Skinny is a 6’2”, 165-lb. New Orleans police officer on suspension after having wrecked one too many police cars. He gets involved in an arson investigation when it appears that luscious Karen Hodges, who lives in his apartment complex, is incriminated. With the help of the almost equally skinny Ruth, secretary to Karen’s partner, Skinny solves the case. The mystery plot is pretty standard, but the novel has considerable offbeat charm, largely due to its unusual hero. As I mentioned last week, he refers to himself in the third person. (When he and tall, cool Ruth decide they’re both too bony to enjoy sex on the kitchen floor, Skinny reflects, “Skinny’s not too skinny for carpet.”) Genre fans looking for something amusingly different might try this 1990 title.
