The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy

My mother started reading this book after she gave birth to me, and threw it away freaked out after a few pages. Later she blamed the decision on hormonal imbalance and declared the book one of the best she ever read. This novel by Ellroy made me seriously reconsider the greatness of Chandler and Hammett, as I don’t think the two can even compare to Ellroy.

Having watched L.A. Confidential (but without having read the book) I knew Ellroy could weave intricate plots mixing real-life characters and events to anchor them to the reality of 1940s and 1950s LA, but I wasn’t expecting to be this drawn into a book of his this quickly. Having found the intricacies of a movie like Chinatown excessive and borderline laughable, I would have never thought I would have enjoyed so much the twists towards the end of the novel.

And, oddly enough, even the sort-of-sweet and somewhat romantic epilogue manages not to be cheesy.

L’Amante Senza Fissa Dimora – Carlo Fruttero & Franco Lucentini

This was a very thoughtful gift by my best-friend’s mother, after I had taken her daughter to Venice (she was actually keen on visiting every church, unlike the girl I had previously taken) and right before I left for Canada (again, with her daughter seeing me off at the airport with my parents).

Fruttero & Lucentini were not the greatest Italian writers of the 20^th century, but for anyone who loves Turin and/or Venice their books are endearing to say the least. In addition to that, L’Amante Senza Fissa Dimora borrows heavily from the Jewish milieu and tradition, making it a sure sell with me. The love story is sweet, the switching viewpoints kind of neat (and again made me wonder whether Fruttero was writing one and Lucentini the other) and most of all the fact that I knew who Fugger was made me feel incredibly smug (more so than the usual, if at all possible).

Sostiene Pereira – Antonio Tabucchi

Often people forget that, in the sea of mediocrity that has been the Italian literary landscape for the last 20 years or so, some great books have still been written. And that’s a shame. Often people forget that – though softer than many of its contemporaries – Salazar’s Estado Novo was still a Fascist regime. And that’s probably an even greater shame.

Sostiene Pereira is an excellent book. The reader feels for the uncertainties, aloofness and naivety of old Pereira and at the same time falls in love with the charming and young Monteiro Rossi. The constant repetition of the fact that “Pereira maintains” most of the things happening in the book is a wonderful way to keep the pace of the novel. Lisbon’s melancholy comes alive in Tabucchi’s pages (even more so than in Saramago’s ones in my opinion). And the clarification, in a note at the end of the book, on the racial/religious connotations of Portuguese surnames coming from names for fruit trees (“Pereira” means “pear tree” in Portuguese) puts the novel under a different light.

The movie by Roberto Faenza is also something that should have enjoyed more success than it did, seeing together some of the greatest European actors of the last 30 years (and more): Stefano Dionisi (already mentioned for his role in Il Paritigiano Johnny), the inimitable Marcello Mastroianni, Daniel Auteuil, and Joaquim De Almeida. Ah, and also Nicoletta Braschi, who I think has made a career just out of being Benigni’s wife (why even Jim Jarmusch felt like giving her important roles in some of his movies is just beyond me).

To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf

If reading The Hours made me want to read something by Virginia Woolf, reading To the Lighthouse quickly made me reconsider that. I initially borrowed a copy of the book from the library of my Canadian school, never going beyond page 3, and last year I just forced myself to read it.

I don’t think I’ve ever struggled as much with a 200-page book. Its stream of consciousness was considerably heavier than any I had read before. Its lack of dialogue drove me mad. I knew the novel wasn’t going to have much of a plot, but I wasn’t expecting it to be essentially about nothing.

The one thing I liked about this book was its cover (one of Hopper’s lighthouses) and now I can’t even find it on Google images. I’m glad I’ve read it because I felt like I had to, but I could think of so many better things to do with my time (including popping bubble wrap, doing jumping jacks, giving my grandma a call, etc.)

No Country for Old Men – Cormac McCarthy

This was the first novel by McCarthy that I read, and I did so a few months after the movie came out. I read it on one of my trips to the US to visit my then-girlfriend-now-wife as she was studying in Pennsylvania (not at UPenn like most people think, but still at a pretty good college, by the way, and on a massive scholarship – so take that).

I remember not being impressed, and having a fierce discussion about this with a friend of a friend I was visiting in Princeton. He essentially told me I was an idiot and that No Country for Old Men was far from being one of McCarthy’s best works and that I had no right to speak cause I hadn't read any of his other books. He was partially right. He was also a massive jerk (funny how those specimen often seem to congregate at great universities).

I guess I just didn’t see much of a point in the book. The deep reflections of the sheriff are just a bit stale for me. And Chigurh is just a bit (?!?) much. On the way back from that trip I tried watching the Coen brothers’ movie. Granted I was on a plane and purists will say that’s no way to watch a movie, but I lasted until Chigurh stole the car in the first 15 minutes of the film before deciding it was better to stop it and to snooze for a while trying to prevent jet-lag (something which I fully knew you can’t really do anyway).