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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"In a classless society, anyone can be Cary Grant.", 17 Aug 2006
Cary Grant's assignment by MI6 to play the role of Yugoslav leader Marshall Tito in a film biography is just one of the plot lines in this jam-packed novel, filled with subplots from its 1954 setting. The west is trying to form closer ties with Tito, while the Soviets, with whom he has already broken, are acting to prevent this. Many Italian partisans fought on the Yugoslav front during World War II and have remained there, supported by friends and family in Bologna as they engage in the smuggling of oil into Trieste. As members of the local communist party, these Bolognese supporters are trying to control the future of "Italian" Trieste. In Naples, Salvatore Lucania ("Lucky Luciano"), recently deported from the US, works at controlling the world's drug trade.
As these plots develop simultaneously, the reader must keep track of dozens of characters and their activities, since the various plots do not overlap until the end. Cary Grant, Alfred Hitchcock, David Niven, Grace Kelly, and the James Bond novels all play parts in Grant's story. The Naples story, with Luciano, involves all the on-going crimes of this don and his henchmen--drugs, race-fixing, gambling, prostitution. The Bologna plot is far more domestic, with a young man searching for his father, who is in Trieste, and a love story involving a married woman who takes care of her mentally ill brother. Minor threads involve the McCarthy hearings, Emperor Bao Dai from Vietnam, Nikita Krushchev, and even Fidel Castro.
Wu Ming, the "author," is actually a collective of five Italian writers (four of whom, known as "Luther Blissett," wrote the Reformation novel, Q). While this device allows for enormous creativity, the accumulation of vast amounts of period detail, and the introduction of more characters than I can recall in one novel in a long time, the novel suffers from a looseness in construction and a lack of control. The grand finale, while worthy of James Bond, is actually anticlimactic as the various plots come together more than five hundred pages after they began.
Filled with local color--bars, casinos, races, card games, and political movements--the novel is often lively and fun to read. The points of view and location change every few pages, however, and the reader often feels as if s/he is reading four separate novels simultaneously. Humor and irony pervade the novel, including sections written from the point of view of a TV set, a scheme to make a Madonna weep, and a satiric view of an FBI agent. There's a lot of everything in this novel! One wishes its authors had subjected it to more vigorous pruning. Mary Whipple
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Cold War treat., 21 Sep 2005
Being a huge fan of Q I have been eagerly awaiting the follow up from the Luther Blissett/ Wu Ming collective. And '54 is not a disappointment, although it is different. Q was the story of one man, doggedly so (arguably even the extracts from Q's diary, as they were given to the protagonist in the end are not outside the central characters sphere of knowledge) and its pace was from the way in which the book would flicker between periods in time. '54 however, is the story of several characters moving through a strict timeline that marches on day by day each chapter. And it is the characters who inhabit '54 that make it such a rich book. There is Pierre, a young Italian who reminded me of Tony in Saturday Night Fever, and his relationship with a married woman. There is Steve "Cement" an American gangster living in Italy wanting to break free from his powerful boss. Then of course, Cary Grant. The Cary Grant sections, as another reviewer has said are excellent, especially when he is struggling with his own identity - is he Cary Grant or Archie Leech? '54 maintains the fast pace of Q and as a result suffers from some of its failings. The chapters are often very short and frequently move between distant and unrelated characters in the blink of an eye and for much of the book it is uncertain why we are being told the story of these people. The connections become apparent towards the end and the glue that holds them together is Cary Grant who is taken to the Eastern Block and sees the madness of the world the other two characters live in. The solution to this however is to enjoy the character's stories and involve yourself in the densely populated and richly historical world of the book. Like Q a lot of the minor characters are instantly memorable and add an extra level of enjoyment. There are a lot of in jokes in '54. One of my favourites involves Casino Royale, a book Cary Grant reads on his sojourn to Yugoslavia, and a book he doesn't enjoy. At one point he is sipping cocktails with David Niven complaining about it and suggesting that there is no way it could ever be made into a film. Another involves an Italian character thinking Alfred Hitchcock is Winston Churchill. In short, this is a book with the range and scholarly depth of Q, but whilst there were very few precedents to Q, '54 has the accessibility of a le Carre or Len Deighton novel. With '54 Wu Ming have again marketed themselves out of the range of the readers who want the next American crime thriller and as a result, '54 is deep and provocative in a way so many books and films these days simply aren't. Treat yourself, read it.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
54, 22 Oct 2007
When a novel balances itself on the head of a pin, and when the complexities of that novel come to weigh as much as the pyramids, there is always the chance that the whole thing will come tumbling down to destroy the piece and end the suspension of belief. The longer the novel, the more intricate the complications, the greater the sense that now, just now, or at the very latest the next page, the plot will unravel and the machinations behind it all will be revealed. Broken cogs in a clock, the hand stuffed inside the ventriloquist's dummy. 54 has an even greater challenge, in that it was written by the Wu Ming collective, a group of five Italian authors working in tandem. Put it all together, and it could be a recipe for disaster. Happily, barring a few unfortunate mistakes, 54 is an entertaining, complicated novel that succeeds more than it fails.
54 draws on a complicated set of character interactions, the beginning of which seem to be ridiculously separate. We have Cary Grant bored with his acting lifestyle, propositioned by the British secret service, the MI6, to travel to Yugoslavia to meet Tito about a movie. We have Pierre, a young Italian man who loves to dance and misses his father. We have a sentient television known, with the clever but strained name of McGuffin. We have drug runners, Italian mobsters, Russian spies, American FBI agents. The list threatens to become exhaustive during the January of 1954 - for the book's name comes from the year in which it is set, 1954, a year when Joseph McCarthy was causing widespread panic and distrust amongst Hollywood entertainers and intellectuals in general through his communist scares - but the novelists keep everything flowing. 54 is written within a tight, most forward chronological timescale, moving from the 1st of January, 1954 to mid-November.
The plot is split into two halves. The first involves Cary Grant's mission to Yugoslavia, and the bizarre interactions that take place between himself and the other characters. Roughly half of this is devoted to Cary Grant's efforts in training his replacement and traveling to Yugoslavia, and half to Pierre. Scattered throughout are smaller chapters which don't seem to have much to do with anything, though they help tie events together during the first climax of the novel at the end of the first part, and form the primary thrust of the second part. Grant is as suave and charismatic as one would hope, adding a nice touch to that is Pierre's fondness for the actor. The second half plays up the role of the McGuffin television set as it is shuffled from character to character, its importance a mystery until suddenly everything comes to an explosive conclusion. Pierre remains an integral part of the novel in the second half, though Grant falls to the sidelines.
For all that the novel seems focused on Grant and Yugoslavia, there is a strong emphasis placed on the state of Italy post World War II. The characters shown are tired, worn, waiting. After the war, the world changed in ways that have made them uncomfortable. America is encroaching upon their lifestyles, and the promises of the revolution never really came into fruition. The Aurora Bar's - Pierre's bar - struggle to purchase a television (which is, of course, the McGuffin) for the upcoming soccer world cup is pathetic and sad, yet entertaining and hopeful. There is a sense that the old Italy is seconds away from leaving, with consumerism, commercialism, capitalism and all those others isms of which America is so fond of exporting, right around the corner. The dire spectre of heroin also raises its head, though this functions more as a monetary device than any real social criticism.
Wu Ming means 'anonymous' in Chinese, a name the Wu Ming collective have taken because they wish to dissociate their true names from the celebrity and fame that comes with authorship. Who they are is not important, what they are writing is, or so the saying goes. It is interesting to note that none of the anonymous Wu Ming members are actually unknown - a cursory internet search will reveal who they are - which strikes me as a more honest way of attaining the anonymity required. The chapters of the novel are often written in such a different style that it becomes almost a game to pick which member of the collective is responsible for which piece of text, and I would suggest in future that a group of five translator tackle the novel, one for each author. As it stands now, Shaun Whiteside performs an admirable job in the translation, through the proliferation of words like 'crap' and 'guys' in the narrative text come across as somewhat jarring. Setting aside the translation, there is also a sensation that the ending runs on for fifty pages longer than it should have, for no real reason other than to tie up loose ends that could have easily been left alone to the reader.
54 suffers from, at times, writing that is too clever. Cary Grant, running around as a spy, picks up a James Bond novel and laughs and points out (several times) how it could never be a movie. Marlon Brando is commended on his acting ability - remember that Brando had recently come to the stage in the 1950s - yet a worry remains that he will end up fat and useless. The McGuffin television set is actually called a McGuffin - a name for a plot device which moves everything along while not really being a part of the story - which stretches everything a little too far for this reviewer's liking. However, these too-clever aspects aside, the novel is entertaining and worthwhile. The Wu Ming collective sometimes throw a little too much into the mix - why Russian spies? - but these daubs fail to take away from the grander picture, which is meticulously plotted, carefully orchestrated and wonderfully revealed. There is a lot happening in this novel, with countless references and endless cameos of real people and situations, but a firm thread of plot does shine through. Readers who put up with the scattered beginning will find themselves immersed within an enjoyable, though complicated, read.
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