Thank God for Europa. They are doing a great job in bringing unknown European novelists to the American market. De Silva is a revelation. Torrent Creo Elements/direct Modeling Express (64-bit). I Hadn't Understood is a hilarious and poignant story of a fairly inept Neapolitan lawyer who ends up defending a mobster. Malinconico,the lawyer, narrates his own story and it is filled with humorous asides, cringe-inducing longings and a fair amount of good luck.
Diego De Silva, Non avevo capito niente.
Malinconico hardly has any clients and his love life is a mess. Occassionally he sleeps with his Thank God for Europa. They are doing a great job in bringing unknown European novelists to the American market.
De Silva is a revelation. I Hadn't Understood is a hilarious and poignant story of a fairly inept Neapolitan lawyer who ends up defending a mobster. Malinconico,the lawyer, narrates his own story and it is filled with humorous asides, cringe-inducing longings and a fair amount of good luck. Malinconico hardly has any clients and his love life is a mess. Occassionally he sleeps with his ex-wife. It's completely on her terms. In keeping with his understanding of the world, he refers to her live-in boyfriend as the 'cuckold.'
The truth is that he's the real cuckold. Police Academy Ost Rarity. His wife left him for the other guy. His defense of the mobster is a hesitant affair that he does his best to avoid. However, once a mobster is assigned to tail him and actually saves Malinconico from a beating, the forlorned lawyer takes the case. Malinconico's digressions are wroth reading on their own. A few of them are complete chapters. My favorite being 'What Malinconico Would Say about Gilbert O'Sullivan, About his Submerged Pessimism and the Pedophobia of Contemporary Pop Music If Anyone Were Ever to Ask Him (A Decidedly Improbably Eventuality).
Once a week, I listen to Casey Cassem's top 40 reruns from the 1970s. When you do that it's hard to avoid Gilbert O'Sullivan's Alone Again, which must have been in the top 40 for a year. What makes this novel truly satisfying rather than just a lark is that Malinconico finds a new way of dealing with the world.
He starts to learn a few helpful life lessons from the mobsters he so detests. This is done quietly and quite believably. I loved reading this book.
Vincenzo Malinconico is a lawyer with an almost non-existent practice, still yearning for the wife who left him two years ago for an architect (why is it that ex-wives always seem to end up with architects, he asks), when out of the blue he’s summoned to act as the court-appointed lawyer at the initial interview of a man found with a severed hand buried in his backyard. It’s immediately clear to him that his client, Fantasia, is a very nasty piece of work and the whiff of the Camorra is strong in Vincenzo Malinconico is a lawyer with an almost non-existent practice, still yearning for the wife who left him two years ago for an architect (why is it that ex-wives always seem to end up with architects, he asks), when out of the blue he’s summoned to act as the court-appointed lawyer at the initial interview of a man found with a severed hand buried in his backyard. It’s immediately clear to him that his client, Fantasia, is a very nasty piece of work and the whiff of the Camorra is strong in the air. To his own surprise, he does rather well in the initial duel with the Acting District Attorney and his cheeky performance impresses his client, so much so that he finds himself pursued by the Camorra to see the case through. What follows is both funny and sinister, “a cunning account of the Mafia’s influence on everyday life”, as the blurb says, and a wry examination of the male ego. Against his will Vincenzo finds himself tagged by a Camorra minder/bodyguard who gets him out of a number of ugly situations so that he is forced to recognize the power of brute force and the social and political clout the brand has.