So, I understand this book is actually the last novel the 93-year-old Andrea Camilleri wrote, the twentieth-sixth in his series featuring Inspector SaSo, I understand this book is actually the last novel the 93-year-old Andrea Camilleri wrote, the twentieth-sixth in his series featuring Inspector Salvo Montalbano, set in fictional Vigata, Sicily. Technically two more novels follow; however, the news is that they were written earlier, number twenty-seven focusing on a younger Salvo, for some reason, and number twenty-eight was written in 2005, saved to be the last in the series, such as the case with Agatha Christie’s Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, also written years before. After a couple of more serious political entries, Camilleri returns to his lighter foundations in The Sicilian Method, using humor to try to please his base.
And sex. In the last couple of books Salvo had NOT been falling in love with a younger woman, as his long distance, long-term lover Livia waits for him to grow up, and younger womanizer colleague Mimi Arguello was not sleeping with some girlfriend (well, I am sure he was, but we just hadn’t heard about it), but in this one we return to these men’s foibles. But even with the humorous aspects of this, it’s all less fun than usual. Or maybe, just maybe, we can view all of the philandering in this book as dark satire?
Mimi, having slept with a woman in her apartment, escapes out a window when her husband comes home. He slips into the window of another apartment only to find a dead body. Sorry, not sorry, Mimi, that’s what ya get! Then Catalanotti, a famous theater director, known for his emotionally abusive method acting approach, comes up dead. The Catalanotti Method was the original title. He, like Mimi and Salvo, regularly “sleeps around,” and is found dead. And guess if you think the two crimes are connected: (Correct). Anyway, I initially liked the title of the book, The Sicilian Method, but it no longer makes sense in connection to the theater director, unless the “Method” Camilleri refers to here is about being how men in long term relationships in Sicily (oh, not only in Sicily, you say?) sleep openly with many women? Maybe.
Salvo--again--is to meet with Livia, but hey, I got two murders to solve, can’r see ya, babe, so after all this time, (spoiler alert) in the twenty-sixth novel, Livia (appears to?) at last end the relationship, and Salvo (sadly) has nothing to say back to her. His last word to her is no??! And then he immediately falls in love with an icy forensic expert, Antonia. Salvo uncharacteristically makes a fool of himself for the woman, getting new clothes, a haircut, to the mockery of his colleagues, and does this work?
Well, Montalbano, once attractive to so many women, has now fallen victim to his love of great Sicilian cooking, and has grown fat. is now a glutton. How does the Young Thing respond to his attempts to lure her? She tells him the new jacket makes him look fat! And then, ultimately, when he seems willing to retire and move away with her, she rejects him: “Oh, you thought I would just drop my career and marry you and have multiple children, a man twice my age?” The Other Woman, usually smitten, is not just a (sex) kitten, as it turns out! She has a life!
So, given the death of the philandering director, the dead man in (philandering) Mimi’s tryst, and this slap to Salvo, are we finally making a point about philandering? Maybe. We have two more books, and maybe in the last one we will see a reversal on Salvo re: Livia?
This would be a two star book for me, just okay, but I thought the fact that theater takes its first role in one of the famed theater director’s novels is a nice touch, also played in a way for laughs, with lots of quoting of poetry to boot. While it’s true we never see Salvo actually read--so how is he so literate?--I liked his commentary, and I thought the resolution of the crimes was solid, if not great. ...more
William Goldsmith’s The Bind is a beautifully bound and packaged graphic novel about a family bookbinding business, Egret BindingA Nostalgia for Craft
William Goldsmith’s The Bind is a beautifully bound and packaged graphic novel about a family bookbinding business, Egret Bindings. It’s a carefully crafted book about careful craftsmanship. Also, it’s a tale of a century ago about the rise and fall of this business, narrated in part by the ghost of the original owner, a man who had Standards and is desperate--even having crossed over to the place all great craftsmen must go--to insist on the continuance of said Standards. The story involves the 1910 Egret Bindings publication of a book of poems, A Moonless Land, leatherbound, bejeweled, and goes into a sibling rivalry with some grace and humor.
Goldsmith’s work is of a piece with Katchor’s work on urban architecture, work such as Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer, Seth’s The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists or Clyde Fans. Has a little bit of the feel of Edward Gorey’s work, too. And what is it that binds them? Craft, love of craft, nostalgia for a time when it was valued, and a reinvigoration of that kind of commitment. Lovely pencil and watercolor work, browns, tans, sepia. I really, really like it a lot....more