The Fourth Secret (Inspector Montalbano Series) by Andrea Camilleri

More novella than novel, this latest translation in the Italian Inspector Montalbano Series, a police procedural series set in Sicily, will satisfy adult fans.  If you are a fan of the television film series adapted from the books, then you will already know this story.  The books were adapted faithfully, and the actors portray the characters with just as much faithfulness, that you will surely picture the show just as I did while reading The Fourth Secret.

The Montalbano books (and the TV show) are rich with food, colleagues, Montabano's home by the sea, and his relationship with his long-distance, long-suffering girlfriend Livia.  Montalbano is an egocentric workaholic who is not always decent with his work mates, and almost never decent to his girlfriend, who is really just an easy woman for the emotionally stunted Montalbano.

Here is a fun fan promo for the new Montalbano episode coming on BBC television, which gives a great idea of what the books and the series are like:

If you are not familiar with the characters or locations, then you might have difficulty reading The Fourth Secret, since the author provides very little background information.  It is assumed that you are a fan of the series and have read the other books. 

The author loves to highlight in his books the sometimes eccentric beliefs and behaviors of his Sicilian-Italian compatriots.  He relishes their fears, neuroticism, amorality and poor male-female relationships.  That is where most of the humor comes from in the book.

Montalbano's famous temper is on display.  He is very short of patience and loves to take his frustrations out on objects and people.  At one point, Montalbano nearly destroys a public telephone, and he is called on it by a carabinieri marshal:

Montalbano came back to his senses.  That was the last thing he needed, a brawl between a police inspector and a carabinieri marshal.  And who was going to come and restore order, the border patrol?

There are frequent vulgarities in the book, some sex, and many cases of confusing pronouns.  Some punctuation marks are missing, as are some subjunctive verbs and past perfect forms.  Some of the paragraphing is odd.   

Here is a glimpse of Montalbano's temper and his poor relationship with Livia, his girlfriend, from the TV film series:

Political tirades punctuate the text, perhaps a sounding board for the author.

...this beautiful Europe designed only to please the banks.

Because the translations have been done so long after the original Italian books, The Fourth Secret, La Paura di Montalbano in Italian, could actually be called a historical mystery novel.  It is set in a Europe where Italy still uses the Lira, for example. 

Montalbano's relationship with food is unique.  He experiences food as a sort of religious worship, or meditative trance.

He polished off a huge plate of fried mullet, managing to reach the concentration of a Hindu Brahmin...

I have another page on this site about the series.  But here is the list of books in the Montalbano series to date as English translations:

1. The Shape of Water  (La forma dell’acqua)
2. The Terracotta Dog - (Il cane di terracotta)
3. The Snack Thief (Il ladro di merendine)
4. The Voice of the Violin  (La voce del violino)
5. Excursion to Tindari  (La gita a Tindari)
6. The Scent of the Night  (L’odore della notte)
7. Rounding the Mark  (Il giro di boa)
8. The Patience of the Spider (La pazienza del ragno)
9. The Paper Moon  (La Luna di Carta)
10. August Heat  (La Vampa d'Agosto)
11. The Wings of the Sphinx  (Le Ali della Sfinge)
12. The Track of Sand (La pista di Sabbia)
13. The Potter's Field  (Il campo del vasaio)
14. The Age of Doubt (L'età del dubbio)
15. The Dance of the Seagull (La danza del gabbiano)
16. Treasure Hunt (La caccia al tesoro)
17. Angelica's Smile (Il sorriso di Angelica)
18. Game of Mirrors (Il gioco degli specchi

From the book's description:

In the latest mystery featuring Inspector Montalbano, a deadly accident at a building site prompts a search with shocking revelations

Yesterday morning around seven thirty, an Albanian construction worker, age thirty-eight, Pashko Puka, a legal resident with a work permit, hired by the Santa Maria construction company owned by Alfredo Corso, fell from a scaffold that had been erected during the construction of an apartment building in Tonnarello, between Vigata and Montelusa. His coworkers, who immediately rushed to his aid, unfortunately discovered he had died.

There have been six events euphemistically called “tragedies in the workplace” in the past month. Six deaths caused by an inexplicable disregard for safety regulations. When the local magistrate opens an investigation, Inspector Montalbano is on the case. But Montalbano soon discovers that these seemingly unrelated incidents are only part of a larger network of crimes.

This intricate novella is a testament to Andrea Camilleri’s talent for building engaging plots that continue to charm readers by the thousands.

The Montalbano books are published by Mondadori.

Direct link to Montalbano Series at Mondadori Italy

Here is a direct link to The Fourth Secret at Amazon.com:

Here are links to the first 6 books in the series at Amazon.com:

Please visit the author Camilleri's website.

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.

Agostino by Alberto Moravia - Translated by Michael F. Moore

This English translation by Michael F. Moore is of the 1945 classic, coming-of-age novella, Agostino, by the late Italian novelist Alberto Moravia, which is why I requested a review-copy of this book.

From the first lines of the book, we know that thirteen-year-old Agostino views his mother more like a girl-friend than a mother.  He loves others to admire her beauty while she is with him, feeling special being her special companion.  He dislikes men sharing their company, since they are possible rivals for his mother's attention.  He loves the intimacy of their relationship when they vacation together by the seaside.

The author calls the son's affection for his mother what it is:  an infatuation.

...the intensity of his filial vanity and the turmoil of his infatuation would linger for many years to come.

Alberto Moravia

Agostino is a highly self-conscious, observant boy, with emotions that tend to possessiveness and humiliation.  He also has masochistic tendencies that he indulges with his mother and some beach boys.  

The novella was adapted to film in 1962, in Italian.  Here is an old trailer for that film:

 

The teenager is coming-of-age, but the man he is to become is not one he necessarily likes.  The story of his coming-of-age is told in clear, strong prose.  The details shared with the reader draw a picture of what is happening on the beach, and what is happening inside Agostino's young mind.

Moravia's writing skill is sure and firm and confident, without being pompous or flowery.  The dialogue of the beach boys and their actions are realistic and reminiscent of the book Lord of the Flies, which depicted the uncivilized, sadist life of children left on their own.

There is always an uncomfortable, underlying, unspoken feeling of threat in the story.  One feels Agostino is just a step away from disaster, either with his mother, or with his new-found "friends".  I recall having the same feeling while reading the classic short-story The Lottery, about a sadistic lottery in a small American town.

Sexuality that was, obliviously, all around him all his thirteen years suddenly becomes clear to Agostino, in uncomfortable and awkward ways.  Puberty strikes!  

The dark realization came to him that a difficult and miserable age had begun for him, and he couldn't imagine when it would end.

The hardest part of all this is Agostino's relationship with his oblivious mother, a widow who is too used to living alone with her son, that she has forgotten about modesty.  Her teenaged Agostino is made increasingly uncomfortable by his mother's immodesty and unrestrained sexuality. 

Sometimes he wondered how older boys, knowing what he knew, could still love their mothers.

The summer and Agostino's association with the rough group of beach boys transforms Agostino into a young man who is uncomfortable in both his high-class world, and in the rough, crude world of the poor.  Agostino is lost somewhere in between the two classes. 

Agostino is also full of self-loathing for his sexual feelings toward his mother, causing him to debase himself and to embrace deceit.  He is left longing to become a man, a euphemism for a sexual man, for sexual relations with women, hoping that will stop him from desiring his mother. 

Yes, Freud had a great influence on Moravia!  As did growing up an Italian male in a society where mothers often turned to their sons for emotional support, rather to their unfaithful, macho husbands.

The translation is wonderful, communicating the force of Moravia's powerful, un-embellished prose.  The biggest compliment one can give a translation is that it doesn't read like a translation, and that is the case with Agostino, translated from the original Italian by Michael F. Moore.

From the book's description, which gives rather too much away:

A thirteen-year-old boy spending the summer at a Tuscan seaside resort feels displaced in his beautiful widowed mother’s affections by her cocksure new companion and strays into the company of some local young toughs and their unsettling leader, a fleshy older boatman with six fingers on each hand. Initially repelled by their squalor and brutality, repeatedly humiliated for his well-bred frailty and above all for his ingenuousness in matters of women and sex, the boy nonetheless finds himself masochistically drawn back to the gang’s rough games. And yet what he has learned is too much for him to assimilate; instead of the manly calm he had hoped for he is beset by guilty curiosity and an urgent desire to sever, at any cost, the thread of troubled sensuality that binds him to his mother still.

Alberto Moravia’s classic and yet still startling portrait of innocence lost was written in 1942 but rejected by Fascist censors and not published until 1944, when it became a best seller and secured the author the first literary prize of his career. Revived here in a sparkling new translation by Michael F. Moore, Agostino is poised to enthrall and astonish a twenty-first-century audience.

This English translation of Agostino is published by the NewYork Review of Books Classics:

An innovative list of fiction and nonfiction for discerning and adventurous readers

Direct link to Agostino at NYRB-C

Here are direct links to Agostino at Amazon.com, to this English translation and to the original Italian edition, and to a collection of Moravia novels which includes Agostino.

Here are more books published by the New York Review of Books Classics that are set in Italy:

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.

Daisy Miller by Henry James

This classic novella from 1879, roughly fifty pages long, is by America's foremost novelist, Henry James (b.1843-d.1916), a master of the psychological novel.  The novella is in the public domain, so it is free to download as an e-book from a source I provide below.

You may know Henry James as a writer of heavy, dense prose, but this novella is closer in style to writer Edith Wharton:  conversational, gossipy, often humorous description of relations between men and women of a certain class during the Belle Epoch, with a serious ending.

 

Illustration of a woman offering her help to Daisy, from an illustrated book version of Daisy Miller, free PDF link below

The novella is written in two parts.  The first part of the novella is set in Vevey, Switzerland, a favorite resort location for travelers on the Grand Tour of Europe, next to Lake Geneva, and a stopover before taking the journey through the Alpine passes into Italy.  The second part of the novel is set in Rome, Italy, which was generally the stop before Naples and Pompeii for the Grand Tour tourist.

Rome, Italy, in 1879 is unlike Rome of today.  The Roman sights were open to the public without any fee, and without any closing times.  But it was also home to malaria, in that time before D.D.T. spraying.  A visit to Rome could be deadly.

Illustration of the narrator, from an illustrated book version of Daisy Miller, free PDF link below 

The narrator of the novella is Winterbourne, a spoiled, rich, indulgent, lazy young man, who spends most of him time courting older women in Switzerland.  Winterbourne tells the story of his acquaintance with Annie P. Miller (Daisy Miller), a poorly educated, spoiled, wealthy American woman with an unpolished character and a coquettish demeanor, and an Aspergers-like incomprehension of social niceties and acceptable social behavior.

Daisy is rather brainless.  To her, Europe means hotels, trains, new dresses in Paris.

...Europe was perfectly sweet.  She was not disappointed--not a bit.  She had ever so many intimate friends that had been there ever so many times.

And then she had had ever so many dresses and things from Paris.  Whenever she put on a Paris dress she felt as if she were in Europe.

Here is a clip from a 1974 film-adaptation with a truly awful performance by Cybil Shepard, but it does stick very faithfully to the book, and it was filled on location, this scene at Vevey, Switzerland.

 Illustration of an Italian fan of Daisy's, from an illustrated book version of Daisy Miller, free PDF link below

Winterbourne meets Daisy at Vevey and writes her off as a pretty American flirt with low morals, or at least rather dense, thick, unsophisticated in the way of the world, and the in the rules of propriety. 

...an extraordinary mixture of innocence and crudity...

...continued to present herself as an inscrutable combination of audacity and innocence...

...naturally indelicate...

...audacity and puerility...

 Illustration of a critic of Daisy's, from an illustrated book version of Daisy Miller, free PDF link below

Daisy's mother and young brother are equally dense and inappropriate.  Daisy's mother is like a doormat for her strong-willed, spoiled daughter.  Daisy's beauty and wealth has insulated her from much of the criticism that her behavior causes.  But we learn that fashionable New York City society has deemed Daisy uncouth, the product of new money from the girl's businessman father.  She is the like the daughters on MTV's Sweet Sixteen show, raging idiots untamed by their cowed, new-money mothers.

Henry James's story of Daisy Miller's dangerous folly was a common theme at the time.  Other books warned new-money mothers and young women and their fathers of the dangers they ran trying to fit into high-society without understanding the rules of behavior:  The Hazards of New Wealth by W. D. Howells, The Sword of Damocles by A. K. Green, The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, to name a few.

 Illustration depicting the dangers of malaria in Rome, from an illustrated book version of Daisy Miller, free PDF link below

Daisy Miller, as described by Henry James, is a classic Aspergers.  She has an attractive face, an expensive wardrobe, a limited range of emotions, and she is clueless about societal norms and accepted behaviors.  She cannot understand social clues or cues.  But her wealth and beauty have given her an arrogance and self-assurance that takes blows when her poor decisions have serious consequences. 

It is an interesting and even entertaining read, written in a lighter style than usual for Henry James.  The depictions of people and their psychology always rings true.  The portraits of expatriate life in Switzerland and Rome in the late 1800s are drawn by a man who knew the locales well.  If you enjoy Edith Wharton, you will enjoy Daisy Miller.

Daisy Miller,...

Buy This at Allposters.com

A still-image from a 1974 film adaptation of Daisy Miller

The novella Daisy Miller is in the public domain and available to download for free in various e-book formats from Project Gutenberg, the grand-daddy of free e-books on the Internet.

Direct link to the Daisy Miller e-book download page

If you wish to see the book as it was originally published, with beautiful illustrations, and download a PDF book made from the scanned paged for free, here is the link at the Internet Archive, a wonderful resource for free e-book on-line.

Direct link to the Daisy Miller viewer page and e-book download page

Henry James adapted the novella for the stage, changing the sad ending for a happy one, in an attempt to pander to theatre-goers.  If you are interested in this version, here is a direct link to the un-produced play as it was printed in a book, available for free as in various e-book formats, including a PDF of the scanned pages of the original book, at the Internet Archive.

Direct link to the play Daisy Miller viewer page and e-book download page

If you are interested, here is a link to the Wikipedia page for Daisy Miller, but I suggest you read the novella first, form your own opinion, then read the page, or other critical articles about the story.

Direct link to the Daisy Miller Page

If you wish to purchase a print version of Daisy Miller, or the 1974 film adaptation, here are direct links to the products at Amazon.com.

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.

River of Shadows by Valerio Varesi

River of Shadows is the first book in a police-procedural series set in the Po River Valley of Northern Italy, featuring the senior police officer Commissario Soneri.  The book is translated from the original Italian.  River of Shadows is slow-moving, atmospheric about the Po River area, and with an eye more in the past than in Italy's present-day.

The first sequence of River of Shadows is a long, detailed description of the rain causing flooding on the Po River, a barge traveling down the swollen river, evacuations taking place, and the authorities struggling to cope.

All of the long first sequence is told through the eyes of the elderly members of a boatman's club from the interior of their waterfront clubhouse.  Artfully done and masterfully written, it will enthrall some readers, but it will repel other readers, those who are more used to fast-moving action sequences.

Here is a meditation by one of the old boatmen in River of Shadows:

He thought of the Po, where everything converged and where sooner or later he too would end up, he thought, like the water perpetually flowing downstream.

The boatmen are as much central characters of River of Shadows as Commissario Soneri.  The policeman spends lots of time with the boatmen on the River Po in the course of the book.  Here is Soneri contemplating an old boatman:

All that remained for him was the Po, his landscape, the mist and that little corner of his past which opened up inside the doors of Il Sordo (a local bar).

 

 

 

Third-person limited narration puts us in the head of Commissario Soneri, which is not necessarily a nice place to be.  He is a difficult character:  rude, uncommunicative, moody, selfish, fixated, irritable, brusque, and petty.  Soneri admits:

...curiosity had the same impact on him as caffeine...

Under the influence of that addictive irritability-inducing curiosity, Soneri pursues his case without a thought for anyone else.  Commissario Soneri's primary release is food and wine, so we are treated to all his menus.

Commissario Soneri's secondary release is the most discordant feature of the book.  A cop-groupie woman has latched onto Soneri, his high rank in the police force a turn-on.  She uses him throughout River of Shadows to indulge her other big turn-on, having sex in crime scenes and in the homes of crime victims.

No, I am not kidding.  The cop-groupie just shows up at places Soneri is investigating, and demands sex from him.  The sex is not described in detail, but that does not lesson the creepiness and perverse disrespectfulness of the acts.  At other times, she coerces Soneri into taking her to the crime scene to have sex there.  She even tells him that if he tries to have sex with her in his own bed, she will leave him.

The author makes a point of showing that there is no affection between Soneri and the woman, but only a sexual relationship that would disappear if Commissario Soneri were not a policeman, and if the woman were not indulged in her creepy perversion.

Italy's past battles between Communists and Fascists plays a central role in the story of River of Shadows.  You do not have to be an expert in the era to understand the book, but some understanding of the politics of then and now would help the reader appreciate all the political references made in River of Shadows.

While the ending of River of Shadows does have Commissario Soneri getting the killer, it is not a satisfying ending.  An epilogue would have added greatly to the sense of closure for this reader.  The ending, as it is, is too abrupt, without tying up loose ends, and without letting us now how the resolution of the case is treated by the media, and by Soneri's bosses, and the boatmen, all three of whom have become elements in the story.

If you are a non-Italian reader of Italian crime fiction, the note at the beginning of River of Shadows will interest you:

There are two different police forces in Italy:  The carabinieri are a military unit belonging to the Ministry of Defense; the Polizia are a state police force belonging to the Ministry of the Interior.

The Maresciallo (carabinieri) and Commissario Soneri (polizia) can only be coordinated by the questura, otherwise they report to different ministries.  As to the different hierarchies, the mareciallo is a rank below the commissario.

 

 

 

From the book's description:

Introducing Commissario Soneri and shortlisted for the C.W.A. International Dagger, River of Shadows is a brooding, visceral crime novel packed with atmosphere and tension.

A relentless deluge lashes the Po Valley, and the river itself swells beyond its limits. A barge breaks free of its moorings and drifts erratically downstream; when finally it runs aground its seasoned pilot is nowhere to be found.

The following day, an elderly man of the same surname falls from the window of a nearby hospital. Commissario Soneri, scornful of his superiors' skepticism, is convinced the two incidents are linked. Stonewalled by the bargemen who make their living along the riverbank, he scours the floodplain for clues. As the waters begin to ebb, the river yields up its secrets: tales of past brutality, bitter rivalry and revenge.

The books have been adapted to TV-films called Nebbia e delitti (Fog and Crimes) for Italian television.  They are shown on British TV with English subtitles.  Here is a two minute video trailer for the show with just the distinctive sound track to accompany it, no dialog.

The books in the Commissario Soneri Investigations Series are:

1. River of Shadows
2. The Dark Valley
3. Gold, Frankincense and Dust

The books are published by Quercus Prime Crime at Maclehose Press.

Direct link to the author's page

Here are direct links to River of Shadows at Amazon.com in both e-book and paperback editions:

Here are direct links to all the Soneri books at Amazon.com:

Please visit the author's website.

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.

The Adventures of Pinocchio by Collodi

The Italian author, Carlo Lorenzini, took the name of his mother’s village as his pen name, Collodi.  Early in his career, he wrote satirical articles and plays.  After translating some children's stories for an Italian publisher, be began to write children’s stories for publication in magazines and as books.

From 1881 to 1883 he wrote the stories that make up The Adventures of Pinocchio.  They appeared as installments in a magazine for children called Giornale per i bambini - Magazine for Children. After the last installment in 1883, all the installments were collected together in a book which has become the third most popular book ever written.  In case you don't know, it is the story of a wooden doll who comes to life.

Here is a quote from the moment old Geppetto, the carpenter, discovers that his carving has come to life:

As soon as he reached home, Geppetto took his tools and began to cut and shape the wood into a Marionette.

"What shall I call him?" he said to himself.  "I think I'll call him PINOCCHIO. This name will make his fortune.  I knew a whole family of Pinocchi once--Pinocchio the father, Pinocchia the mother, and Pinocchi the children-- and they were all lucky. The richest of them begged for his living.

After choosing the name for his Marionette, Geppetto set seriously to work to make the hair, the forehead, the eyes. Fancy his surprise when he noticed that these eyes moved and then stared fixedly at him.

 

The Adventures of Pinocchio has been translated into over two hundred languages.  It has been called a manual for childhood, and it has proven to be a manual that can easily cross cultural divides.  But be warned: the story was written in a different time, so there are parts of the work that focus on the harsh realities of that period (1880's) which no longer apply to the lives of most children in the West today.

Carlo Lorenzini died seven years after the publication of the first edition of The Adventures of Pinocchio.  By then, the book had entered into it's fifth printing and it has never been out of print, somewhere in the world, since.  The text is in the public domain.

I've created a free pdf e-book, with pages in landscape with an enlarged text size.  I've also added over 250 illustrations to the book.  It is free from Italophiles.com (Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site), my Italian culture website.  I have a Pinocchio page on the site with more interesting Pinocchio links.  And you can view the first 3 chapters of the illustrated e-book on-line at the site.

Direct link to download the free illustrated Pinocchio pdf e-book

You can also download free Pinocchio e-books in various formats from Project Gutenberg, the grand-daddy of free e-book sites.

Direct link to the free e-books of Pinocchio

And Project Gutenberg also offers the original Italian Pinocchio and the English Pinocchio as free audio books.

Direct link to the download page for the free audio book of Pinocchio in Italian

Direct link to the download page for the free audio book of Pinocchio in English

If you wish to purchase a printed book of the Pinocchio story, I've collected together here a selection of books from Amazon.com.

The story of Pinocchio has been adapted to film several times.  Here is the trailer for the live-action film starring Roberto Benigni.

Here is a small selection of Pinocchio films available for purchase via Amazon.com.

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.

A Room With a View by E. M. Forster

If you've only ever seen the film adapted, very faithfully, from the novella A Room With a View, I strongly suggest you read the novella and savor the words that inspired the modern movie classic.  From the written text, you gain insight into the thoughts of the characters, and you can appreciate the sardonic point of view of Mr. Forster.

Italophiles can savor the setting, and feel nostalgia for the Grand-Tour of the turn-of-the-century well-to-do.  We can appreciate the contrast between warm, sensual Italy, and the cool, restrained northern Europeans.  Forster combined the two natures expertly, and very attractively, in the character of George Emerson, the archetypal leading man:  brains, heart, and a manly nature.

The story is simple, really.  A woman struggles with society and herself, finally choosing to marry for love.  It may not sound too amazing in western countries in this day and age, but in the west at the turn-of-the-century (and in most of the world today), that was a rarity.

A Room With A View is a novella of just over 100 pages.  And yet E. M. Forster's impeccable style and sharp wit makes each line worth at least twenty in any other novel, for the pleasure and punch they offer the reader.

Here is the trailer for the 1985 film made from the book:

Visit the Room With a View page at my Italian culture website, Italophiles.com (Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site), for lots of fun quotes from the novella, and links to the chapters so you can read them on-line on my website.  An extra bonus is the free PDF e-book I offer.

 

 Direct link to free PDF e-book:  Room With A View

Or you can download the book from Project Gutenberg, the grand-daddy of free e-book sites, in various e-book formats.

Direct link to A Room With a View free e-books

If you have a good sense of humor, and enjoy bawdy English humor especially, you'll love the Merchant-Ivory-spoof film Stiff Upper Lips from writer/director Gary Sinyor.  Peter Ustinov is at his comic best in it, and all the other cast members are wonderful, too.  My husband enjoys this film, and says it is his reward for sitting through the original Merchant-Ivory pictures with me.

You can purchase it , along with the Room With a View film, and paperback editions of Forster's novella A Room With a View.  Here are links to the products at Amazon.com:

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.

The Aspern Papers by Henry James

This Henry James novella, The Aspern Papers, is set in decaying Venice.  It was first published in 1888, and was made into a sanitized black and white film in 1947.  The film is pure, delightful, entertaining melodrama.  You can view it below, thanks to YouTube.  The original story, as written by Henry James, however, is darkly wonderful, and not at all melodramatic.

From the a description from a Henry James website (see below):

As a means of getting hold of papers relating to the early-nineteenth century American romantic poet Jeffrey Aspern, the unnamed narrator manages to obtain lodgings in the Venetian palazzo which houses the very old lady who, in her youth, was Aspern’s muse and (probably) lover. Juliana and her niece remain secretive, and the narrator is, ultimately, unable to pay the emotional price which the papers will cost him.

If you have ever read a Henry James novel, especially the later novels, you know they can be ponderous and verbally dense.  The Aspern Papers are anything but!  This is Henry James-light.  It is a joy to read the wordsmith with the brakes on.

The descriptions of decaying Venice, and the decrepit palace are very convincing, and even poetical.  The decrepit woman central to the story is monstrous.  The deceit and cunning and evil intent of the characters is richly described.

You can download a free e-book of The Aspern Papers from Project Gutenberg, the grand-daddy of free e-book sites.  The offer the book in various e-book formats.

Direct link to The Aspern Papers free e-books

The book is available in various formats.  Here are the versions of The Aspern Papers available at Amazon.com.

Please visit this wonderful Henry James website.

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.