Not since Ann Radcliffe has a British author published a more sombre portrayal of Southern Italy. While written entirely in English, Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith’s new novel somehow achieves the rhythm of Italian prose.
Unlike many recently celebrated sensations-in-translation (namely the anonymous Elena Ferrante), Lucie-Smith’s third-person narration means the motivations of his ensemble are less of a mystery. His male characters are, if equally capable of barbarism, less feckless and more fascinating than those from Ferrante’s world.
That the Arundel and Brighton parish priest spent years living in Italy and clocking up expertise about the troublesome mafiosos filling and contributing to the vacuum left by an inert state is obvious. He even snapped the book’s cover image himself.
A universe apart from the glittering yachting jaunts of Le Scandale and Goethe’s “balmy” public gardens, the novel opens with a vivid introduction to the bustling Purgatory district of Sicily’s second largest city, where characters must constantly tread the boundaries between law and crime, poverty and extravagance, life and death.
The novel has the fundamental building blocks of a good story, believable characters and a solid moral message. Its eponymous chemist meets his fate early on, leaving his family, namely his eldest son Calogero, to inherit his links to mafia terror.
Unlike the sex and violence now so gratuitously depicted as to lack any novelty, everything is purposeful in Lucie-Smith’s storytelling. Brutal incidents will no doubt make sensitive readers, myself included, recoil in disgust. These moments are vital; they will shatter the illusions of anyone keen to excuse the horrors of organised crime which continues to grip many parts of Italy and the world beyond. Yet Calogero is so obviously a small fry compared to the higher-ups in Palermo, who linger unseen like a vile smell.
A sense of injustice coupled with this ominous undercurrent of deception lingers throughout. Like many tourists to this ancient region, readers will question how a place so beautiful can be so stricken by poverty and social dysfunction.
Lucie-Smith’s narrative bears all the brutality of realists like Thomas Hardy but inverts their anti-Christian cynicism. Where Hardy once lamented the trappings of rigid theology, for Lucie-Smith faith offers his characters liberation from a decadent earthly sphere. For one character, Rosario, the Church also gives him the material means to flee abuse and pursue his wish to join the priesthood.
Don Giorgio, another character who shares his vocation with the author, struggles over whether to permit the gangsters any proximity to the Church, for fear that purging them entirely will do more harm than good.
His suffocating district is a microcosm of the hypocrisy and contradictions common to this world. Calogero is unfazed by unspeakable acts of violence but, unlike many powerful men, he will not cheat on his wife. Nor does he have any time for modern technology.
However, he was more than happy to exploit a destitute woman, the Romanian immigrant Anna, prior to his marriage. “[Calogero] liked the transactional nature to the encounters, their lack of emotion. He even enjoyed the way Anna clearly resented him, found his visits an imposition.”
It is through Anna that Lucie-Smith provides a glimpse into the grisly reality of “sex work” which overwhelmingly involves the exploitation of impoverished women and will make some readers shift uncomfortably in their deckchairs. They should be equally aggrieved by Lucie-Smith’s hints that the trade of fashionable drugs is a key pillar of this brutal network. He does not shy away from suggesting that evil is real, and may not be remedied in this life.
Calogero’s mother, who possesses a pagan-like reverence for familial honour, however morally perverted, is Anna’s foil. A forgettable character who rarely speaks, by obeying her eldest son’s demands she prompts the exile of her youngest from the family. Her failure to fulfil her maternal duty is perhaps the greatest betrayal of the novel.
Unsurprisingly, the nature versus nurture question rears its head. Rosario and Calogero are products of the same violent upbringing and deprived community, but only one of them respects truth. Calogero’s deliberate grooming of Rosario’s classmate Turridu into his criminal world is another warning about how impressionable, young and desperate people can be lured towards the latter.
This bingeworthy book will make a gripping afternoon’s reading. Its sequel, The Nymph of Syracuse, has already hit the shelves.
Georgia Gilholy writes for the Spectator and the Critic.
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