Sicilian Tragedee [Hardcover]

Well, this isn't literature, and there isn't much of a story here either, but "Sicilian Tragedee" is hilariously funny, some parts of which I've not enjoyed so much since portions of Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2001). People around me at my favorite Italian coffee shop in Larkspur, California, often asked me why I was laughing while reading. At times, the writing resembles that found on www.dickipedia.com.

In a nutshell, "Sicilian Tragedee" is all about small-minded people dealing with the world in their small-minded way, unable for the most part to get out of their small-minded rut of talking ONLY about other small-minded people. The story is 100% small minded. There is not one shred of an important notion in this novel put forward by the author or its characters. The people are so ordinary and so consumed by their pettiness and their low-brow contrivances that they sink well below what might otherwise be merely a caricature of modern life, even in Sicily. As to Sicily, bless its woeful and long-suffering inferiority complex, that fabled island is at all times is presented to you by Cappellani in such a way as to never allow you to let go of your own, often irrational, prejudices about Sicilian people and its culture. Pity.

I found myself totally uninterested in "who done it," that is, the solution to the three "Mafiosi events" that dominate the end of the story. For a much more engaging and truer mystery (just as funny, too), read anything by the wildly popular and acclaimed (deservedly so) Andrea Camilleri, author of serial Sicilian-based novels, such as, "The Shape of Water, "The Snack Thief" and others. But, "Sicilian Tragedee" is not a mystery story, no, not at all. It is much less than that.

I had trouble finishing the book, taking about a week of on again off again attempts to push myself to the end. Finishing it was a chore. And, the end was greatly disappointing. The interesting characters all vanish, and the story sort of just dribbles off into inanity, with no sense of finality or cohesion. Why do some modern authors, many of whom are outstanding writers, have such trouble bringing a story to a satisfying end? Cappellani is certainly not the first. He is joined by very famous writers in this predicament, including Arturo Perez-Reverte.

So what's good about this book? 1. Spot-on translation, simply fantastic and immaculate, as if the original had been written by someone who grew up on slum streets of Newark, New Jersey. 2. Words, lovely obscene words, written by a wordsmith who knows the workings of perfect put-downs, scathing sarcastic observations of people, and crude, gutter-like dialogue and even worse inner thoughts. 3. Outrageous personalities, crisply drawn and extraordinarily consistent, populate this book. There is no cookie cutter in use here. Not that I want to personally know any of them, but being at one of their parties would be an awfully entertaining experience.

Page 45, Betty, "....who for her lunch has put on the sort of bright pink vinyl mini-dress that only a turbocharged "b-j" specialist would wear." Page 131, "When she thinks about what's going to happen tonight (the party at her villa), the Contessa is as close as she can get to remembering what an orgasm is like."

[..]

In many ways, the book presents itself as an outline for a movie, but it's better than film, because the reader is forced to imagine everything - the people, their interactions, their weird thoughts and their silly predicaments. Thus (with apologies to Leavitt's review) it feels more like a radio broadcast -- as in the good old days when radio presented such tales on the air, with sound effects and dramatic readings, requiring your imagination to fill in the gaps. However, it would also make a great movie, independent or foreign, if cast with character actors who are not Hollywood or Italian stars.

[...]

If you are an Italo-American,(and even if you're not) it's a great read. If you are an American (as I am) married to an unbridled Italian woman from Milan, it's even more fun. Who but the Italians could conjure up a travelling drama troupe playing Shakespeare in front of an assortment of small town comic uber-politicos and principessa wannabes hell bent on destroying each other before the curtain rises on Act IV. The book gives new meaning to the phrase "laugh-riot".

(3.5 stars) Organized in three acts, this contemporary Italian comedy is easy to imagine as a film filled with sight gags, pratfalls, and mugging by rubber-faced actors. Short scenes, with "asides" by the characters, set up much of the comedy, some of which is a satiric look at Sicilian society--its social levels and mores, its paralyzing political and cultural bureaucracy, and, of course, its Mafia wars.

Beginning "two months later," with an assassination in a theatre during an experimental production of Romeo and Juliet, the novel quickly switches back to "two months earlier," with the introduction of more than twenty characters, all of whom are involved, somehow, with the production of this Shakespearean tragedy. Tino Cagnotto, the director, must figure out a way to get the local minister of culture to sign off on it and to provide funds, but political realities being what they are, the minister is unwilling to do that. He must also find a place to hold the production, but no one seems to want to provide that, either. Taking matters into his own hands, and making connections as he can, Cagnotto manages to bring the play into being. The production is bawdy, and the line "Why, then, is my pump well-flowered," is played to the hilt by an actor sporting a codpiece.

Love stories, gay and straight, abound--between Cagnotto and Bobo (a male salesclerk and aspiring actor), between Romeo and Mercutio, between the daughter of a Mafia money-launderer and the head of another Mafia family with oil interests, and between various other characters, their mistresses, and wives. "How perfect it would be to be able to resolve matters of the heart the same way you resolved business matters," the men believe. "A little bomb, a nice explosion, and you never had to worry about it again." Before the play is over and the novel finished, two more deaths have occurred.

It is not until the halfway point that the action really gets going, and the scenes from Romeo and Juliet, complete with adlibs and asides are hilarious. The reader must use a great deal of imagination throughout the novel, however, since it reads like a screenplay, lacking the description and the transitions between scenes and events which give flow to novels and make them come alive. Some of the humor and satire seems geared to an Italian audience, and the large cast of characters and their interrelationships are sometimes difficult to keep straight without notes. An amusing novel with a huge scope, this novel would benefit greatly from the visual imagery provided by film. Here it is dependent on the reader's own imagination. n Mary Whipple

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