Guido Guerrieri – Gianrico Carofiglio

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.

The Trial – Franz Kafka

I would have never thought I would have actually thoroughly enjoyed a book by Kafka. Extracts from his Metamorphosis were just too absurd and paranoid for me.

Yet, I loved reading The Trial, probably because Josef K. Seems to take everything well (I wouldn’t exactly say light-heartedly, but at least he seems to remain optimistic for most of the novel). Despite its theme and its ending, the novel is really not as grim as I expected it to be. Pleasantly surprised, I read this book in a quiet evening. And by the end of it, much to my delighted surprise, I didn’t even feel like a cockroach.

To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

 

I don’t care if it was Harper Lee or Truman Capote who actually wrote the book (although the awful reviews that Go Set a Watchman is receiving might suggest it was actually the latter), I think it’s one of those books everybody should read. And if they don’t want to, they should be forced.

Atticus is the man everyone wants (or at least should) want to be, and that’s probably because, far from being perfect, he “does the right thing” (I am aware I’ve already used this expression – but hey I’m not a writer…). He might even have some racist traits, although he is clearly not proud of them, but in my opinion they can be put down to his surroundings (or maybe I can allow myself to do that, because I’m white).

For once, this is not a coming-of-age book that I wish I had read when I was 13 (i.e. when I was coming of age but was refusing to read anything). I feel that reading it when I was 28 ended up being perfect.

I just wish I had the liberty and luxury of having a mental picture of an Atticus that didn’t look exactly like Gregory Peck. Boo Radley, on the other hand, would have probably had the face of a young Robert Duvall even if I hadn’t watched the movie first.