TLS Halland review

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giardino dei Finzi-Contini (1970),
wiII soon be
dun'-
deviated from the original to such an extent
as much of an outcast as Fa@ati.
The novella reaches its climax as the narrator
red in
that- despite having collaborated on the screenplav. Bassani asked that his name be removed
newspapers, "at the bottom
loman
ccept-
he
ornly,
from the credits. He was reportedly far happier with Giuliano Montaldo's more faithful
adaptation of Gli occhiali d'oro (1987), which
ard of
has now been published by Penguin
There
Turn-
ffanslation
ITOWS
The novella, published in 1958, forms the
frst part of what came to be known as The
Novel of Fenara. Set in that northem city,
it unfolds between the mid- and late 1930s.
A Venetian by birth, Dr Athos Fadigati, a
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it not only serves
as a metaphor for Italy's slide into barbarism
but could also be read as a critique ofthe parochialism that has sometimes characterized the
gotten. Pleasingly layered,
middle-aged ENT specialist, has become
almost an honorary Ferrarese. He runs a
fashionable practice on Via Gorgadello, and
though his eccentricities - such as his preference for the lower-class stalls at the cinema
rather than the balcony seats favoured by
the elite - fuel much chatter, he is deemed
discreet and respectable enough to be left to
his own devices. Yet Fadigati's bachelorhood eventually proves a fatal chink in his
meticulously constucted public persona. The
see
Other began to seep into every facet of
Italian society. This brief novella eulogizes
Fadigati and countless like him: once loved
and respected, then scorned and finally for-
Gold-Rimmed Spectacles.
rumours seem innocuous at first: "To the
husbands as to the wives it seemed absurd
that a man of such quality should not have
thought once and for all of establishing a
family". Not long later, Fadigati is no longer
I
account that fails to mention his suicide.
The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles transcends its
deceptively simple plot to become a study of
civic hatred * charting how the loathing of the
a new
The
nimal
Imat-
ies. It
page, opposite the spofts repofts", a brief
by Jamie Mc-Kendrick as
erned
rquillfrom
stumbles across Fadigati's obituary in the
of the left-hand
spoken
of with
respect,
but is
instead
described as "like that" or "one of them": an
undesirable, a homosexual.
Bassani deftly depicts the harrowing manner in which gossip ffansforms into mockery,
then ostracism and final1y hatred. Narrated by
Peninsula - as well as a melancholy chronicle
of the destruction of the tolerant Ferrara, once
a thriving centre of Italian Jewish culture.
McKendrick is Bassani's third translator
after Isabel Quigly and William Weaver,
who published their versions of Gli occhiali
d'oro in 1960 and 1975 respectively. Penguin
will issue McKendrick's translations of the
remaining parts of The Novel of Ferrara, starlthe same precocious youth as The Garden of ing with The Smell of Hay in20l3, as well as
the Finzi-Continis, The Gold-Rimmed SpectaThe Heron and Behind the Door in 2014 and
c/es shows us how Fadigati is at frst able to 2015. McKendrick is undoubtedly Bassani's
live out his sexuality on the shadowy fringes finest ffanslator yet, capturing his elegance
Nicola Farron and Rupert Everett in the
film version of Gli occhiali d' oro (1987)
ofrespectable sociefy; yet when he decides to
pursue the affections of the handsome and
cruel Eraldo Deliliers, a Fascist thug half his
age, his ruil seems inevitable. A voracious parasite, Deliliers becomes increasingly violent
towards Fadigati when the unlikely couple
are holidaying at a seaside resort in Riccione,
and subtle ironies. His afterword is also deserv-
ing of praise. This renewed interest in Bassani
is
overdue: perhaps the most underrated
Italian writer of the past century, Bassani was
also a fine poet and a daring editor, famously
responsible for publishing Lampedusa's 1l
gattopardo in 1958.
a
Not adding up
A nyone who has read a police repon
lf will have a sense of how embarassI \ing the aftermath o[a crime can be for
it. In a criminal investigation the lines of inquiry, dutifully typed in,
can leap from forensic detail to incongruous
and baffling fragments of information: the
affair that someone may or may not have had,
or the views of a next-door neighbour. Crime
novels thrive on such discordance and the
frisson it affords - with the tacit assurance that
the detail is significant and the leads lead
somewhere. Pia Juul's acerbic short novel Tre
Murder of Halland, first published in Danish
as Mordet pd Halland (2009), explores the
sheer oddness of trying to draw conclusions
based on what people say and do. Translated
by Martin Aitken, it is the first of Juul's
novels to be published in English.
Juul's antihero is Bess, a writer who wakes
up one morning to find that Halland, the man
she lives with, has been shot. Almost immedi-
CHRISTINA PETRIE
Pia Juul
the people caught up in
ately a "bewildered-looking man" from the
neighbourhood attempts to arrest her for
THE MURDER OF HALLAND
Translated by Martin Aitken
I74pp. Peirene. Paperback, f10.
978095628407 5
Halland's murder. This is the first in a series
ofincongruous and "ridiculous" events. Bess
finds herself peeing drunkenly in the woods,
kissing another man, shouting at people and
having to force herself "to concentrate on
the coffin" at Halland's funeral. "Whatever
they expect me to do, I won't!", she declares.
Meanwhile, clues appear - or rather, details
that would furnish clues in a different novel:
a mysterious set of keys belonging to
Halland, for example. "Can no-one in this
town put two and two together?"
Testy and unpredictable, Bess is a disconcerting study of someone who is not thinking
straight. Yet her narrative voice has a compel-
TLS AUGUST 3 2012
ling bluntness and immediacy. Juul's storytelling takes place in nuances of cognition -
exploring the ways in which Bess's attention
and concentration have been affected by
shock. "I didn't think anything much because
I didn't know what was happening." On seeing Halland's body she immediately begins
to think not of Halland but of her estranged
daughter, Abby. A woman whose "curiosity
invariably outweighed" her "vanity", Bess
lets no one off the hook, above all herself.
"Doesn't everyone look back with bewilderment on what they've said and done?"
A *ry response, perhaps, to a wave of
Scandinavian crime fiction, The Murder oJ
Halland resists the idea that things add up and questions whether thoughts are access-
ible to the person who has had them, let
alone anyone else. Bess resists drawing any
conclusive explanation of her relationship
with Halland in the light of the things she
finds out alout him after his death. It is the
embarrassment this causes others in the small
town where she lives that makes the novel
sparkle. Bess, a mass of contradictions, appar-
ently reluctant to admit that there is such a
thing as personality, sticks in the mind as a
brilliantly drawn character.