|
Ever since Jack the Ripper, we think of serial killers as belonging almost exclusively to the English-speaking world. Of course, the extent to which this is true is distressing -- a whopping 76 percent of serial killers are from the US -- but it's not entirely true. So while it is jarring to come across a serial killer novel from the European continent, it shouldn't surprise us: they have to deal with it too.
Carlo Lucarelli's Almost Blue is a smashingly effective serial killer novel set in Bologna, Italy. From what I can tell using the Babelfish translation program at Altavista.com, Lucarelli's an interesting cat: journalist, novelist, postpunk musician, teacher, cartoonist and web designer. As a writer, he's staggeringly prolific; at just over 40 years of age, he's written novels, plays, radio dramas, a history of jazz and treatises on the Italian police and fascism -- at least 30 books in all (again, according to Italian websites I have difficulty reading). For someone (seemingly) so scattered, Almost Blue is an uncommonly focused piece of work.
In the novel, Grazia Negro (a name Babelfish turns into "Grace Black Person") is a young female police detective working with a new unit designed to track serial killers. There's one on the loose, vivisecting university students in Bologna. Meanwhile, Simone (whose name, for American readers, has a persistently feminine connotation) is a young blind man who hears the voice of the killer while tuning into the sounds of the city on his scanner.
At least in this book, Lucarelli demonstrates his profound indebtedness to Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter novels. Structurally, this book is strikingly similar to The Silence of the Lambs, while the Italian setting inevitably evokes comparison to Hannibal. In spirit, Grazia is a touch closer to Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone (A is for Alibi, etc.), but she's close enough to Clarice Starling for the resemblance to be noticeable. Fortunately, Lucarelli is canny enough to acknowledge Harris's novel explicitly.
The quality of the Lucarelli's writing is first-rate: if Thomas Harris is the point of departure, then Almost Blue suggests The Silence of the Lambs as rewritten by Paul Auster -- or someone with an effectively spare writing style, anyway. Lucarelli expertly juggles three points of view throughout -- Grazia, Simone, and the killer -- and his economy and control is truly admirable. He effortlessly makes Grazia likeable, but then she represents normalcy; his most brilliant writing is reserved for the two male characters. Lucarelli's treatment of Simone's sightless world is arresting, sharp, perceptive and always imaginative -- without ever feeling showy. And his depiction of the killer's mental landscape is utterly chilling -- baroque, twisted, unsettling and always vivid. In fact, those passages are downright freaky -- they're very intense.
(While I'm on the quality of the writing, I must note that Oonagh Stransky's translation is one of the finest I've ever read. Insofar as I can so confidently praise Lucarelli's writing, I am obviously heavily dependent on Stransky's unfailingly precise and unfussy rendition of Lucarelli's Italian prose.)
The book is gripping and sometimes gory, but Lucarelli never pushes it too far. He keeps the book short, the better to ratchet up the tension. However, the novel does have serious flaws, all centering around the killer. Suffice it to say that no matter how compelling and convincing his portrayal of the killer is, Lucarelli brazenly overstates the capabilities of this deluded maniac in several ways. In an effort to endow his killer with Lecter-like scariness, Lucarelli risks endowing him with outright supernatural omnipotence. It's not the worst trade-off, but it's still a problem.
Not enough of one, however, to tarnish my enjoyment of this book. Almost Blue is the first book of Lucarelli's to be translated into English. I urge City Lights to enlist Stransky post-haste in translating the sequel, Un giorno dopo l'altro, so that I can find out what happens next to plucky Grazia Negro.
-- Martin Schneider
· · · · · · ·
About the Publisher:
The City Lights masthead says "A Literary Meetingplace since 1953", and this concept includes publishing books as well as selling them. In 1955, Ferlinghetti launched City Lights Publishers with the now-famous Pocket Poets Series; since then, the press has gone on to publish a wide range of titles, both poetry and prose, fiction and nonfiction, international and local authors. Today, City Lights has well over a hundred titles in print, with a dozen new titles being published each year. The press is known and respected for its commitment to innovative and progressive ideas, and its resistance to forces of conservatism and censorship.
|
