Last summer in the City by Gianfranco Calligarich

Last Summer in the City by Gianfranco Calligarich

Italian fiction

Original title –  L’ultima estate in città

Translator – Howard Curtis

Source – Personal copy

I am always wary of the translated book that is a summer success. A beach reads a book you see on the list of books to read and the end-of-year list. I am wary as they often seem to be more commercial fiction but I had see this and that when he wrote it one of the writers that championed his cause was Natalia Ginzburg, a writer whose books I have loved, and I thought, yes, it may be popular but it is a book about Rome in the summer what is not to like9I’ve never been to Rome, I am the original armchair traveller in my reading ). He then chose to go into Film and television screenwriting. He published short stories many years later with much acclaim. The time of this book varies I had it done as a book from 1970 and over place it mention 1073, I’m assuming he wrote it in 1970 and it maybe came out on a broader audience in 1973. I can see him being a screenwriter. This book is rich in place and character that it would easily make a film as we follow Leo.

The wind was rising by the time I got to an apartment block surrounded by a damp, rustling garden. It was only then, perhaps because of the smell of the wet earth, that it occurred to me I should have brought Viola some flowers, but it was too late now, and I was so hungry I could barely stand. So I kept on, confronting the final test, an elevator that throughout the ride up emitted a menacing drone, as if complaining about my weight. Reaching the third floor, I quickly tidied my hair and rang the doorbell. Viola appeared. She looked surprised. Before I could say anything, she let out a little hiccup and burst into irrepressible laughter. I must have looked like a flood victim to her. “Come in, Leo,” she said, taking me by the arm. “God, how happy I am to see you. How did you manage to find us?”

As I say he capture the feel of the city well in the book

The book focuses on summer and our main character, Leo, as he has left his home in Milan and headed to Rome. He hangs out in Rome with a friend who is a drunkard but has a rich American wife . Leo has an air about him. He wants to live the high life but is failing a man who wants to be more than his parts (don’t we all, though). But Rome isn’t Milan; the summer is there, and he is struggling. He has friends who help him sell him an old ALFA, which adds to his wanting to be a specific type of man in the eyes of others. He then meets Arriane, a woman who, in the way she is described, feels a little like Italian Lucy Honeychurch. The two fall for each other, but it is that deep spark of flying love that either caries on and smoulders or dies. This is a case of the latter as we see the fall rise and ultimately the fall of Leo over one summer in Rome.

The city was caressing us. Gradually, it became less difficult to think about Arianna. Basically, nothing irreparable had happened, Nothing irreparable ever happened in this city — sad things, maybe, but not irreparable ones. And anyway, if I was going to leave town, I wanted to see her. At this hour, she must be in Eva’s store, playing solitaire.

“Let’s get the hell out of here, I said. “I know some people nearby who could offer us a drink.”

“Leftovers” he said, “nothing but leftovers.”

Graziano pulled himself to his feet and followed me up the steps until we got to Trinità dei Monti, then we took the street that went downhill, leading to Eva’s store. We climbed the front steps, holding on to the railing, then pushed the glass door. A bell rang as it opened. The humorist was there reading something aloud, along with the fashion model, Livio Stresa, and Paolo, that journalist with the special way with women, sitting next to Arianna. I was greeted as if it were the most natural thing in the world for me to be joining them.

He is so caught by the Arianna

This has the feel of a classic story from maybe years before it came out. It did for me anyway. Hence  It is compared to Catch in the Rye and Great Gatsby, but neither is near the mark. This is the flip of Ginzburg. It is a male view of those years in the late seventies in Roma, with glamour and darkness, and we see both in this book. For me, Leo has wandered of a Tom Waits song or some other ballader of those men that have broken dreams. If Waits was Italian, would he write a song called “A Letter from a Friend in Rome ?”A man who wants to be in with the crowd but never is fully in the crowd. The other character in the book is the city in the summer and how it is to be in Rome when you are just another face in the crowd. Jacqui said she found it evocative and atmospheric. It has that it captures a place and a type of man. The sort of fallen man on the edge of Wodehouse novels or a side figure in Waugh, if that makes sense. Not quite in the money but likes to think he can be, and then he finds love, but even that ends up flawed. A flawed summer of a flawed man? A nice third stop on this week’s 1970 club!