Butterflies, Language and Crime

Last week I read Bel Canto by Ann Patchett and ended up feeling like Ray Bradbury's Eckels, just back from his holiday, staring at the sign in Time Safari's office.
  Previously I'd been reading nothing but crime fiction. Dave had  introduced me to Jo Nesbo and Fred Vargas and I thoroughly enjoyed both of the books he lent me: Nesbo's The Redbreast and Vargas's Have Mercy on Us All. He told me that like Camelleri's Montalbano novels Vargas's should ideally be read in sequence as there is a developing thread connecting them - in the case of Commissaire Adamsberg his relationship with his occasional lover Camille. So I began with The Chalk Circle Man. which I found entertaining but far less interesting than Have Mercy on Us All.  I read the next book in the sequence - Seeking Whom He May Devour - hoping to confirm the obvious explanation that Vargas's skills improved with time. At first, to my consternation, I found this book rather tedious, possibly because Adamsberg hardly features in it until half way through. I also had problems with the translator, David Bellos, choosing to give the book a new title rather than simply translating its original: L'Homme à l'envers. The book centres on a homicidal wolf, and in the AV's translation of Peter's first epistle 'seeking whom he may devour' refers to a lion not a wolf. Although Bellos puts the phrase into the mouths of characters in the novel I doubt that the French original used an instantly recognisable allusion to the Petrine epistle. The original title, on the other hand, neatly encapsulates both the novel's central motif, lycanthropia, and the dual nature of the murderer. That aside, once Adamsberg took centre-stage things improved enormously so I'll probably buy the next in the series: Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand.
   This year's offering by Camilleri, Una lama di luce, was a distinct improvement on the last few books. Once again Montalbano was playing Mike Tucker to an intelligent version of Vicky but this time he ended the relationship because he'd come to terms with the reality of his life:

E ora sapiva finalmenti quello che doviva fari. Con la sò morti, François ligava lui a Livia e Livia a lui chiossà d'essere maritati.
…Quella stissa sira, alle novi, Marian tuppiò a longo a 'na porta che non sapiva che non le sarebbi stata mai cchiù aperta.
And now he finally knew what he had to do. François [a boy he'd once been going to adopt] had bound him to Livia [his long term partner] with his death more than if they were married.
… At nine the same evening Marian [the younger woman] knocked at the door for a long time, unaware that it would never again be opened.

   Having overdosed on gialli, I thought that it was time to take a break from crime fiction and read a 'proper' novel again. Bel Canto was one of the books we'd inherited from Laurie when she sold her house in Italy, and I was encouraged to read it by an article in the Corriere which, starting from the absurd premise that women are incapable of writing great fiction, listed Ann Patchett as a case in point. Alas the novel didn't reveal her to be another Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf or Margaret Atwood, let alone an Emily Brontë. Nor had I escaped the world of crime.
   The action of the novel takes place in the official residence of the Vice-President of an unidentified South American country where a birthday party for a Japanese industrialist is being hosted. A passionate opera-lover, he has been persuaded to come to South America because the world's leading soprano has been engaged to sing at the party. The party is interrupted by the violent incursion of a band of rather inept terrorists who hold the guests hostage for several months. Gradually the individual personalities of the guests and terrorists emerge and a variety of relationships develop between them. Most importantly, the Japanese businessman, Mr Hosokawa - we never learn his first name - and the American diva, Roxanne Coss, fall in love; as do his interpreter Gen Watanabe and a female terrorist, Carmen. The setting and the characterisation are handled well, but the ending is lame. Although one could justify it structurally the author fails to make it feel authentic and a great writer must do both. I'd had problems with the novel's authenticity earlier. The guests and terrorists come from a variety of linguistic communities and are consequently heavily dependent on Gen's services. The narrator comments that some have a smattering of languages other than their own and offers the Italians' knowledge of schoolboy French as an example.  The problem is that whilst it is true that Italians learn French at school, anyone who has lived in Italy will know that most Italians have little difficulty in understanding Spanish - the language of the terrorists. A fact which completely escapes Ann Patchett, and a major blunder for a novel which is centred on exploring the relationship between language and life. I thought that I'd detected another problem in the novel's understanding of language. A priest is described as 'performing' sacraments rather than celebrating them, and giving a dying man 'viaticum' rather than the viaticum. I assumed that this would be due to the author being protestant and consequently being as unfamiliar with catholic terminology as she was with Italian culture. Wrong: she had a catholic education. I then assumed that this was an American usage cognate with their calling maths 'math' and sport 'sports'. Wrong again. Consulting the current catholic catechism revealed that the viaticum has dropped the definite article throughout the English-speaking world. The reason for my confusion was that I had stopped practising my religion in England since the early seventies, only returning to it when we moved to Italy. Although, like every language, English is in a constant state of flux, when you live in the middle of the river you're caught up by its movement and are carried along by it. 'Train station' replacing railway station and 'bored of' supplanting bored by are both deplored by us elderly pedants, but they no longer strike us as odd, only regrettable. However, by losing contact with the language of English catholicism for forty years the changes struck me forcefully. By abandoning catholicism, like Eckles I had stepped on a butterfly.
   This Wednesday Pat and I went with Jane and her house-guest, Don, to a concert at Villa Vinci: '"Primadonna" La tradizione del Belcanto'. In Ann Patchett's novel the soprano was a white American and her accompanist Japanese. Villa Vinci is even more sumptuous than the her fictional Vice-President's residence. In a mirror image of the novel, the soprano - Hiroko Morita - was Japanese and her accompanist, Roberto Galletto, white. Fortunately no terrorists emerged from the central heating ducts. But the butterfly put in an appearance: Miss Morita's final aria was Un bel di vedremmo!