So, I recommended that my eldest read Long Time No See and she suggested I gave Last Summer In The City a try. What a great swap it proved to be, both of us coming out as happy readers.
Leo Gazzara leaves his Milan home to find a new life in Rome. It's quite a leap. The world of his family is a simple one, full of the noble grit of a working-class household under which the shadow cast by his father serving in WW2 looms large. Rome, on the other hand, is ruled by a frivolous class steeped in glamour and success. They have high opinions while really they're floundering out there in the shallows.
For Leo the transition should be easy, his good looks, charm and intellect perfectly suited to help him rise through the ranks and remain in high society. Problem is, he can't see the value in anything. He holds the world in disdain, looking down on the paltry falseness of many of his ilk. The only places he really finds solace are in the bars of the city or in the bottom of the bottles he consumes.
He's a fairly cold protagonist, for whom opportunities trip over themselves to land at his feet, yet he's incapable of picking them up for long, overcome each time by a sense that everything is pointless.
His relationships are interesting. There's the actor whom he manages to respect, the love interests that he is able to take or leave and his best friend, a Bukowski-like creative who sponges off his wife to pay for the booze he soaks his insides in. In each case, Leo appears to be ambivalent and yet entirely in need of support and affirmation.
There are lots of occasions where I felt a strong urge to reach inside the pages and give Leo a good shake, maybe slap his face and show him how good he has it, but that's not the kind of thing you can do in a book and I imagine the fiction is all the stronger with him being left to his own devices.
Last Summer has a dark underbelly with moments of humour and insight. Calligarich has a wonderful way with words and his turn of phrase often hits mouth-opening quality. As the ending swallows you up, everything that has been before makes total sense and I reckon a reread to get the best out of it might be in order.
Glad that I took this one on, a reminder that you have to shake things up every once in a while to find or revisit a perspective. Excellent stuff.
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