Like I’ve done with Simenon’s Maigret, I’ll
group all of Carofiglio’s novels about lawyer Guido Guerrieri into one post.
The books are well written and sufficiently interesting, but little more, and
their success is a sad reflection of the staleness of the current Italian literary
landscape.
Guerrieri is simply too nice, good, and
politically correct. I’m not saying you need to have the personal flaws of
Philip Marlowe to be an interesting character in a mystery novel, but at least
show some personal defects like Montalbano, Carvalho, Maigret etc. One thing is
being on the side of the poor and emarginated, another thing is doing it with
this sort of holiness.
Not to mention the thing that bothered me the
most about these books: all their supposedly cultural references were of
offensive banality. I love it when a book introduces me to a new musician or an
obscure film director I had never heard of before. I don’t need books to tell
me that Clarence Clemons’s solo in Jungleland was probably the greatest sax solo
in the history of rock music.
No comments:
Post a Comment