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).

La Donna della Domenica – Carlo Fruttero & Franco Lucentini

I’m not quite sure what someone who’s not from Turin would think of this book. Probably that it’s good, but it’s too long for a detective story, probably that it’s funny, but the idea of a lethal granite dildo may be a bit too stupid.

Coming from Turin, though, this book is absolutely awesome. It paints a perfect picture of the place, a “town” of a million people where the rich all know each other and live side by side on the hills, physically looking down on the lives of the rest of the city and its workers.

I always get a massive kick out of being absolutely familiar with a book’s (or a movie’s) locations, and this  book is obviously no exception – with the added benefit that these locations aren’t ones I’ve discovered as a tourist or as a grown-up, they are the streets and squares where I used to spend my weekends as a teenager, or where I would have gone had I actually ever had the guts to skip school.

I just wish I could realize which parts were written by Fruttero and which ones by Lucentini...