Review: The Burning Air, by Eugene Mirabelli

The Burning Air, by Eugene Mirabelli

a review by Rich Horton

Eugene Mirabelli was born in Massachusetts in 1931 -- same state, a month earlier than my father. He became a professor of literture, and wrote his thesis on Faulkner, and taught for a few years. His first novel, The Burning Air, was published in 1959, and a few more followed. He married Margaret Black in 1959, and they had three children, and Gene published three novels. She worked as an editor, and after Gene stopped teaching he worked for a left wing weekly, and returned to academia later. More novels such as The Language Nobody Speaks (reviewed here) and The Goddess in Love with a Horse followed. Margaret died suddenly in 2010, and Renato the Painter was published soon afterwards. In 2003 he had published a very fine story in F&SF, "The Only Known Jump Across Time", and several other SF and Fantasy stories followed, in F&SF, Asimov's, and Not One of Us. (I reprinted three of these stories, in my Best of the Year volumes and in Lightspeed.) Gene is still alive at 92.

I think his SF/F stories from the decade between 2003 and 2013 are remarkable and deserve a collection. I decided to explore his non-SF work a few years ago, and I read The Language Nobody Speaks (1999), an erotically charged and quite effective book, reviewed here. Just a couple of months ago I saw a post about the paperback edition of The Burning Air, which, not unusually for paperbacks in that era, emphasized the erotic aspects of the novel (which are present, but hardly in a sleazy way.) (The cover, which is really not sleazy at all, is by the great Robert McGinnis, and it's fairly faithful to the novel except giving Giulia blond hair.) I looked for a copy to try, and bought the first edition, and I've finally read it. 

It's a short novel, just under 40,000 words. It's told by a young man named George, who is visiting his girlfriend Giulia Molla's parents for the first time, with the intention of getting their approval for the couple to marry. But the novel's first sentence tells us how it's going to end: "The last time I saw Guilia was at the train station in Bayfield." The rest of the book tells the story of a seemingly rather nice weekend, but over it all hangs a sort of dread as the reader knows that George and Guilia's relationship is doomed.

Both young people are Italian-Americans, nominally Catholic, well-educated. There may be hints to fissures early in some of that -- does George's name as opposed to Giulia's hint his family is more assimilated? (After all Giulia's grandmother insists on calling him Giorgio -- but also, Giulia's teenaged brother is named Michael. And, we learn eventually, the Molla's have been in the US much longer than George's family.) George may have been raised Catholic, but he never goes to Mass, and indeed Giulia conspires to skip Mass this weekend. As for education, George is working as a free-lance journalist, but vows to get a teaching job if his finances remain vulnerable; while Giulia has a chance for a graduate fellowship in Italy, which her mother desperately wants her to attend. But there are other issues -- the couple have been dating for about three years, but for a period they had broken up, and Giulia had had another boyfriend, of whom George is very jealous. They are sleeping together -- and they take the chance to make love a couple of times over the weekend -- but it's clear they feel a bit guilty about doing this knowing that Giulia's mother and grandmother, at least, are very opposed to premarital sex.

The weekend involves some awkward conversations between George and the rest of Giulia's family -- as he helps her father do yard work (and fixes the lawnmower), as he washes some dishes, goes to the beach with Giulia and Michael, visits with married friends of Giulia, shares a big family dinner, and as the two tell Mr and Mrs Molla of their plans to marry. Mr Molla gives his approval though Mrs Molla is clearly against it. But Giulia and George are determined, almost to the point of eloping. And in the end -- which is ambiguous in a sense but clearly a true end as the first sentence indicates -- it seems that the real problem is with George himself.

This is a fine first novel, though I'd say clearly a first novel, and not wholly successful. The structure is elegant, but the long middle does drag just a bit, though the events portrayed are all important. The conclusion is strong and moving, as George seems to ultimately shy away from trusting himself. This isn't by any means Mirabelli's best work, but it's a good debut that presaged a strong and varied career -- though I'm not sure Mirabelli's novels ever had broad commercial success.

Review: Clovis, by Michael Fessier

Clovis, by Michael Fessier

a review by Rich Horton

A couple of months ago I read an issue of F&SF with a story by Michael Fessier, an author with whom I was completely unfamiliar. I read up on him, and learned that he had written a couple genre or genre-adjacent novels, and, especially after I enjoyed his story in that issue, I decided I'd track down the novels. And here then is Clovis, a very short novel (about 33,000 words), published in 1948. (It was reprinted as recently as 2000.)

Fessier (1905-1988) published several SF or Fantasy stories (three of them reprinted in F&SF and another anthologized by Murray Leinster) and a couple of fantastical novels. He's better known as a screenwriter, with credits including the Fred Astaire/Rita Hayworth musical You'll Never Get Rich and even an episode of Gilligan's Island. In the '30s and '40s he worked in Hollywood, writing a couple of dozen produced screenplays, then he moved to New York and wrote for television, with his final contributions being six episodes for The High Chaparral, ending in 1969. From 1961 until his death in 1988 he was married to the actress Lilian Bond, but he must have been married at least once before because the jacket copy on this novel states that as of its publication in 1949 he is married with two children. (The 1940 census shows that his wife was named Suta, and he had two children, Josephine (3 years old) and Michael (10 months old).) He also wrote a good deal of short fiction -- not just the SF but a fair amount of crime fiction and some fiction for the slicks. He wrote at least one other novels: Fully Dressed and in his Right Mind, a noirish novel with fantastical elements, from 1935. His papers are at the University of Oregon, and their catalog claims manuscripts for three novels -- I can't find the third unless it is Nessuno l'avrebbe detto, published in Italy in 1949 (but in translation). That means "Nobody Would Ever Say", and I'm inclined to believe it's a translation of Clovis.

Clovis is an intelligent parrot, the result of hundreds of years of breeding by the von Lerner family. The last of the von Lerners is August, and Clovis is the last of his line of parrots. They live in Brazil. Clovis is remarkably intelligent (much more so than August) and he is cynical, and he is tired of his life. He decides to leave August, and find some parrots, and give them the benefit of his greater knowledge. He also might get some female action. But of course, as he learns to his displeasure, life in the jungle is harder than he had realized, and the parrots don't have any interest in his intellectual discourse.

He is captured by some local Indians, who are ready to roast him when an American named Thad rescues him -- only to cage him and put him on a boat to New York, figuring a talking parrot will fetch him a tidy sum. But Clovis escapes, and ends up in a pet shop. He manipulates his potential buyers until he ends up with a nice-seeming old lady, but of course that doesn't go well either. And his adventures continue -- he uncovers a plot to murder a young heiress, cures her cousin of alcoholism, and ends up back in the hands of Thad, who has fallen for the heiress, and she for him except she is convinced she has no sex drive and frustrated when Thad won't confirm the diagnosis by giving in to her attempts at seduction. Thad's moneymaking schemes come to nothing until he runs into a crooked evangelist -- and suddenly Clovis' cynicism and ability to talk have an outlet. But ...

Well, I won't say more. The book is out and out satire, though mostly somewhat gentle (except in the treatment of the evangelist.) And it is often very funny. The romance plot with Thad and the heiress, and the drinking cure, are almost Wodehousian. Clovis' cynical utterances are quite amusing as well. The murder plot is very light-hearted, and doesn't come off quite as amusing as the rest of the book. The book doesn't outstay its welcome -- though it probably reaches the limits of its welcome! Fun stuff on the whole, and I have to say I'm glad I read it.

Old Bestseller Review: The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas

The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas (with Auguste Maquet)

a review by Rich Horton

This is one of the most famous 19th Century novels, and has never stopped being read, and adapted. The central story has been the basis for any number of works, including one of the greatest SF novels of all time: The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester. I myself have known the vague outline of the story for a long time, partly due to osmosis, partly due to such fractional adaptions as the Mr. Magoo cartoon version. I found a free audiobook version, from Librivox, and figured it would be a good thing to listen to for the next 54 hours of driving! It's read by David Clarke, and he does an excellent job, if on occasion his accents get a touch hammy. (That said, his versions of the Count's many voices are very nice.) I should mention that I complained about the last Librivox audiobook I tried, because the narration was pretty amateurish. This is much much better. (I will note that there's at least one other Librivox reading of The Count of Monte Cristo, and the reviews of it suggest that it is not nearly as good as the one I've read.) I don't know which translation Clarke is reading, but I also have the 2003 Penguin Classics edition, translated by Robin Buss. I believe the Buss translation is better than the one Clarke is reading, but that one is not bad. (I suspect it may be the earliest English translation, from 1846; or one of the later translations that were largely based on that one, such as an 1894 version that Robin Buss mentions a few times in his introduction.)

Alexandre Dumas was born in Picardy in 1802. His father was born in Haiti, the illegitimate son of a Marquis and an enslaved woman. His mother was an innkeeper's daughter. Dumas was his grandmother's family name, adopted by Alexandre's father after a break with his noble father. Alexandre's father was a successful general under Napoleon, but died of cancer in 1806. Dumas's family connections got him a decent position with Louis-Philippe, future King of France. Dumas soon began writing articles and then plays, and after a couple of successes became a full-time writer, and turned to novels. His most significant works appeared in quick succession between 1844 and 1847: The Three Musketeers and its sequels; The Corsican Brothers, and The Count of Monte Cristo. Dumas died in 1870. His son, also named Alexandre, also illegitimate (the elder Dumas had multiple marriages and many affairs) became a successful writer as well, by far best remembered for La Dame Aux Camellias, the source material for Verdi's La Traviata, one of the greatest operas of all time. The father is often styled Alexandre Dumas père, the son Dumas fils. 

I have above given co-credit to August Maquet. Dumas, incredibly prolific, ran a sort of fiction factory, employing other writers to plot his books and to research them. It does appear that Dumas, in most of the books, did the bulk of the page by page writing. But Maquet, his most common assistant, eventually sued him for credit, and while Maquet did not get credit, he did get a considerable financial settlement. In the case of The Count of Monte Cristo, Robin Buss suggests that it was Maquet who insisted on adding the early chapters in which Edmond Dantès is framed and thrown in jail.

So, what to say about the story itself? Any kind of detailed plot summary seems silly -- to say too much might give away some of the pleasure, and would take a while -- it's a long book. And most everyone knows the basics. I'll quickly summarize them anyway. The novel tells of Edmond Dantès, a young sailor just returned from a voyage on which his Captain died, leaving him in charge. He is chosen by his employer to take the permanent position of Captain -- and thus he can marry his beloved, the Catalan girl Mercédès. But the jealousy of another Catalan, Fernand, who loves Mercédès, plus that of Danglars, supercargo on his ship, who dislikes Edmond, leads to them accusing him of Bonapartist sympathies. (This part is set in 1815, just as Bonaparte is leaving Elba for his last "100 days".) Villefort, the prosecutor in charge of the resulting case, realizes that Dantès is innocent but has him imprisoned in the Chateau D'If anyway, as it will benefit his political advancement and also because his own father is a Bonapartist.

Dantès remains in jail for 14 years, and befriends another prisoner, the mad monk Faria, who, over many years, gives him a remarkable education, and also reveals the location of a fantastic treasure, on the island of Monte Cristo. Dantès finally escapes (in a wonderful sequence), and manages to locate the treasure ... and, nine years later, he emerges, first in Rome, then in Paris, as the Count of Monte Cristo. In the mean time, he has learned, his enemies have reached high positions (partly through additional corrupt actions): Villefort is the Crown Prosecutor, Fernand has become the Comte de Morcerf, and Danglars is now a Baron. The Count makes a sensation, partly because of his money, partly his mystery. But his goal is revenge on those who betrayed him -- and all three of the main villains begin to see their luck strangely turn ...

Well, that's rather skeletal, and it misses a lot. But that's OK! The fun is in the discovering. I will mention as many other key characters as I can: Maximilien Morrel, son of M. Morrel who owned the ship Edmond worked on; Albert de Morcerf, son of Fernand; Franz d'Epinay, a close friend of Albert's; Haydée, a beautiful young Greek-Albanian woman, the companion or slave of the Count of Monte Cristo (Haydée's back story (which is loosely historically based) is central to the book, but I'll leave it for the reader to learn); Valentine de Villefort, the daughter of M. de Villefort by his first wife; Mme. de Villefort, Villefort's sinister second wife; Eugénie Danglars, the daughter of one of Dantès' betrayers, and a rather sympathetically portrayed Lesbian (some people nowadays suggest she is a trans man) who is unwillingly supposed to marry Albert; Caderousse, a baker and neighbor of Edmond's father, who by inaction abets Fernand and Danglars' plot against Edmond, and whose greed sends him on the path to ruin; Luigi Vampa, a Roman bandit; Mme. Danglars, a beauty who married Danglars for his money, and who has carried on serial affairs, including one with M. de Villefort which leads in the end to tragedy; Bertuccio, the Count's faithful Corsican servant, who coincidentally is entangled with the lives of Villefort and Danglars and thus the Count himself (though, as becomes clear, almost every seeming coincidence in the novel is the result of the Count's knowledge and planning); Benedetto, an habitual criminal who the Count hires to portray an Italian nobleman as part of his plans of revenge; and Noirtier, M. de Villefort's father, who ends his life horrifyingly paralyzed, with only his granddaughter Valentine to care for him.

This list of characters, most of whose stories are significantly and entertainingly elaborated, is one reason the novel is so long -- and also never boring. And there are many more minor characters -- the newspaperman Beauchamp, Caderousse's sickly and shrewish wife La Carconte, Major Cavalcanti, Maximilien Morrel's sister Julie and her husband Emmanuel, the Count's mute Nubian servant Ali, to say nothing of such pivotal but secretive people as the English Lord Willmore and the Italian cleric Abbé Busoni; and even such minor characters as the telegraph operator who appears only in the chapter with the delightful title "How to Rescue a Gardener from the Dormice who are Eating his Peaches".

The novel is well-written if not beautifully so (as always, I should caution that I am basing such an evaluation on the translation(s) I read and heard.) Dumas was a very witty writer. The characters are nicely limned, if (as Buss argues, and I agree) it is somewhat difficult to square the early depictions of Fernand and Danglars with their later incarnations as the Comte de Morcerf and the Baron Danglars. It is clearly a work of popular fiction in that the plot is far from realistic -- that said, the depictions of 1830s Paris and Rome seem pretty solid (and Dumas sprinkles in mentions of things like a couple of his favorite inns and hotels.) And for all the unrealism of the plot, and the near magical nature of the Count's powers and his fortune, the central themes: corruption, vengeance, and the ultimate dangers of living for vengeance (especially with regards to collateral damage) -- all leading to a paean to forgiveness -- are quite powerful.

The bottom line is simple: this novel has been extremely popular since it first appeared in 1844. And it wholly deserves this -- it is glorious, sometimes delirious, fun. It is first of all entertainment, but entertainment with some depth behind it. It is a very long novel -- roughly half a million words -- but always interesting, never a slog. And you know what -- a long TV adaptation -- in a dozen or twenty hour long episodes, say -- could be really wonderful. 

Another Victorian Novel: Orthodox, by Dorothea Gerard

Review: Orthodox, by Dorothea Gerard

by Rich Horton

I found this slim novel at the St. Louis County Book Fair. It is a British Library facsimile reprint of the first edition, from Longman's, Green and Co., in 1888. I could not resist a Victorian novel by a woman of whom I had never heard. And it is quite short (not quite 40,000 words) so it wouldn't take up much of my time anyway.

Dorothea Gerard was born in Scotland in 1855. Her father was a Colonel, and maternal grandfather a somewhat notable inventor, Sir John Robison. She spent several years in Austria as a child, and upon her mother's death in 1870, moved there again to live with her sister, who had married a Polish cavalry officer. The two sisters began collaborating on novels in 1877, and had some success with Reata and The Waters of Hercules and other books, written as by "E. D. Gerard". (Emily also published non-fiction, notably a couple of books about Transylvania, and its legends, which are said to have inspired Bram Stoker when he wrote Dracula.) Dorothea also married a military man, an Austrian officer who eventually became a Major General, and was given the title "Longard de Longgarde", so that some of Dorothea's later novels were published as by "Dorothea Longard de Longgarde". 

Dorothea largely stopped collaborating with her sister upon her marriage; and she was a very prolific author in her own right. Her novels were often, not surprisingly, set in Eastern Europe where she lived; though she always wrote in English. According to Wikipedia, her later books often were published by the German firm Tauchnitz, and marketed to English travelers and expatriates. She died in 1915, having lived in seclusion for many years after the death of her husband and her sister.

Her novels often seem to have been romances, apparently set among the Eastern European upper classes. She was politically conservative, but had a reputation for addressing controversial subjects, in particular prejudices across divides of class, nationality, and ethnicity, and also antisemitism. This is interesting in the context of the novel at hand.

Orthodox opens "I propose to tell the story of how my friend and comrade, Rudolph von Ortenegg, fell into the hands of the Jews ..." This did not seem terribly promising. The narrator is a 23 year old Polish officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, stationed in Poland. His friend Rudolph is the only son of an old German aristocrat, and he grew up in near isolation, so his social skills are minimal, and he has some ideas that the narrator thinks are foolish. Among these is disgust at the mistreatment of the local Jews -- which disgust the narrator finds shocking, for in his view why shouldn't one treat vermin like vermin.

Things get worse when, by chance, they encounter an astonishingly beautiful young Jewish woman, Salome. Before long Rudolph is smitten, and so too, it seems, is Salome. Against his friend's advice, Rudolph and Salome begin to plot a way for them to marry -- which of course will involve Salome converting to Catholicism. Naturally her family are aghast at the thought of this (and so too will Rudolph's father be) -- their only ally is Salome's spunky younger sister Surchen. But Rudolph manages to spirit Salome away to a nearby convent. All seems to be going well -- but Salome's father has different plans.

As I've described this, it seems nice enough, and arguably a somewhat "anti-antisemitism" book. But -- it's not, really. (Maybe it is relative to many of Gerard's contemporaries, I suppose.) Although Rudolph is quite sincere in his belief that the abusive behavior of the Polish Christians towards Jews is terrible, his primary motive for improving their lot is to convert them. And the book itself -- and its narrator -- lean in a wholly unchallenged way fully into the most offensive descriptions of the Jewish characters. They are all money grubbers, and sinisterly clever, and dishonest. Salome's sister Surchen is perhaps the most appealing character in the book -- she is as I said spunky, and quite intelligent -- but she is depicted as doing everything she does to make a bit of money. There are constant slurs as to hygiene and so on; and even the praise of some of them (for example, of Salome's beauty) is heavily tinged with Orientalist cliches. Add to that the character of Salome herself -- she is weak and really sort of a cipher -- Rudolph appears to care only about her looks. I don't know how accurate Gerard's depiction of Orthodox Jewish customs in Poland at the time is -- perhaps it is quite accurate, and as such the women seem quite oppressed -- only, I think the same could likely be said about Christian women in Poland in that era.

All in all, not a book I can recommend. I will say that Gerard could write, and with considerable wit. I dare say some of her other novels might be more palatable, but this one was -- well, offensive is the main thing.

Review: Granger's Crossing, by Mark W. Tiedemann

Granger's Crossing

a novel by Mark W. Tiedemann

Blank Slate Press (an Imprint of Amphorae Publishing), St. Louis, 2023, Trade Paperback, 376 pages, $17.95, ISBN: 978-1-943075-75-1

a review by Rich Horton

Mark W. Tiedemann is a St. Louisan, a photographer and was a long-time bookseller at Left Bank Books. He has published ten science fiction novels and dozens of short stories. Granger's Crossing is his first venture into historical fiction. (He's also a friend of mine of long standing, and the leader of an SF book club in which I participate.)

Granger is introduced as a Lieutenant in the Continental Army in 1780, having crossed into St. Louis -- then a Spanish territory -- to investigate the disappearance of his friend, Ham Inwood, who had come to a certain Don Diego Cortez's property to investigate reports of a man hiding out there. What Granger finds is his friend's murdered body, and some further mysteries involving Cortez's horses, his brother, and some gold. Back in St. Louis after another man is shot, Granger meets an intriguing married woman named Martine, and vows to return -- either to solve his friend's murder, or to see if there's a future with Martine. 

But the War intervenes, and it is not until it is over, and the United States are officially independent, that Granger can return. He sets up a business in Cahokia, and before long is dealing in St. Louis. He tries to reconnect wtih the now widowed Martine, but she is acting oddly distant. His attempts to investigate Granger’s friend's murder meets resistance, suggestions he should go back East, and even threats. Don Diego Cortez's fiancée arrives from Spain, and questions arise about Diego's identity -- could he really be his twin brother instead?

Granger -- still a young and somewhat callow man -- realizes he needs to make some decisions. He becomes a Spanish citizen so he can move to the St. Louis side of the river. He lets Martine know of his interest in her, even as she is being courted by another man, and as she is about to lose her home, as her husband's sons from a previous marriage will get her property. Granger ends up buying Martine's house, but realizes Martine needs space to make her decisions. And Granger doubles down on the search for the reasons for Ham's murder.

This is a compelling novel, mixing a fascinating historical background that is not widely known --St. Louis under Spanish rule -- even to a long-time St. Louisan like me. There are a couple of interesting mysteries to resolve, and an alluring romance. St. Louisans will recognize a number of names: Gratiot, Chouteau, Cerré, etc; and some of the geography, including nods to towns like Cahokia and Cape Girardeau. I was invested in Granger's quests -- for Martine, and for Ham's murderer; and the solutions are satisfying. This is a novel about American history, and St. Louis history, that fascinates on those grounds, and Granger's personal story is also involving.

Resurrected Review: Paladin of Souls, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Here's another review resurrected from my old website and the SFF Net newsgroups. This one appeared back in 2004.

Paladin of Souls, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Eos, New York, NY, September 2003, 464 pages, Hardcover, US$24.95, ISBN:0-380-97902-0
a review by Rich Horton

Paladin of Souls is Lois McMaster Bujold's latest novel, her third fantasy, and a fairly direct sequel to The Curse of Chalion. It seems that Bujold's energies are now focussed on her fantasy secondary world, centered on the Royacy of Chalion, which has certain similarities to Renaissance era Iberia. At any rate, I understand that her next novel will be another Chalionese book. This seems a good choice -- I liked both The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls better than her most recent Vorkosigan book, Diplomatic Immunity.

Paladin of Souls is the story of the Dowager Royina Ista of Chalion, mother of the new Royina Iselle, and widow of the late, cursed Roya Ias. The Curse of Chalion covered the events leading to the lifting of a terrible curse on the royal family of Chalion. Ista, who bore bravely years of living under the curse, with a terrible load of guilt and fear, as well as the burden of a loveless marriage and possession by a god which made her essentially insane, is now free of that. But her family and retainers are very protective of her -- her regained sanity remains in doubt, and she has lived a very circumscribed life. As the book opens she is chafing under what is in essence imprisonment, and she conceives the notion of a pilgrimage, ostensibly to pray for the birth of a grandson, but in reality simply to get out of her household for some time. She recruits, partly by accident, a new attendant who is actually a not very wellborn young woman named Liss,distinguished mainly by her horsemanship (she is a courier); and a priest of the Bastard to guide her pilgrimage: a young, fat, irreverent, and rather lusty fellow. She also accepts the protection of a group of soldiers led by two brothers, Ferda and Foix.

What she had hoped would be an interesting journey rather quickly turns dangerous. There are rumors of a great outbreak of demons, and disastrously one soon possesses Ferda. Then they run into a raiding party from the neighboring princedom of Jokona, who are adherents to a (mutually) heretical form of the Chalionese religion. They are rescued by a local nobleman, a great fighter and very handsome man named Arhys. At Arhys's castle, Ista finds a very jealous wife, and a severely ill half-brother, and, worse, indications of more aggression from the Jokonans. All this is surely tied to the infestations of demons ...

I thought it quite well done. Ista is an affecting character. The magic system/religion that Bujold has worked out remains interesting and a good source of plot conflicts. Perhaps Ista's powers seem to scale just a little conveniently to match the needs of the plot -- ever a problem with fantasies. But I enjoyed reading the novel, and I was surprised at several turns (if at other times things worked out a bit routinely). It is another fine story from Bujold.

Old Bestseller Review: The Betrothed, by Alessandro Manzoni

Review: The Betrothed, by Alessandro Manzoni

by Rich Horton

Not all countries have a "national novel", but apparently Italy does -- Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi, 1827, revised 1840.) This was its author's only novel, though he also wrote poetry, plays, and nonfiction. He had a rocky life in some ways -- his mother apparently had little to do with him, and left his (much older) father when Alessandro was 7. He did rejoin his mother, in Paris, at age 20, and made a happy marriage to a Swiss Protestant woman. But against this happiness, an apparently happy second marriage after his first wife died young, the success of his novel, and the birth of nine children, one must set the fact that seven children died before adulthood, both his wives predeceased him, and his health was poor for the last few decades of his long life. He wrote nothing more after the revised version of I Promessi Sposi appeared, and died in 1873 at the age of 87.

The Betrothed is considered Italy's "national novel" for a few reasons -- one is its sprawling plot, set during a few eventful years in the early 1600s; and its themes: the depredations of local tyrants, the folly of rulers, the ravages of war and plague. In addition, it was published as the desire for Italian reunification (that would culminate in the Risorgimento in the 1860s) was growing, and it was a major influence in the coalescence of the various Italian dialects into an accepted national language, based on the Tuscan dialect in which Manzoni's revised version was published. At his death, he was so celebrated that Verdi's Requiem was written in his honor.

I read the novel in Bruce Penman's translation, from 1972. I also read passages on my Kindle from Alexander Colquhoun's 1951 translation. Not long after I bought the Penman book, used, a new translation appeared, by Michael Moore. I have only sampled that one briefly -- it seems fine, if perhaps leaning a bit more into 21st century turns of phrase than I might prefer. The general feel of the prose is not dissimilar from Penman's, suggesting that both have captured at least to some extent Manzoni's Italian prose. The Colquhoun was less successful, to me -- for one thing, it seemed (mildly) abridged; for another, Colquhoun made the curious choice to Anglicize some names -- so for example the chief villain, Don Rodrigo, is called Don Roderick in his version. (This was a disappointment, for I am a great fan of Colquhoun's translation of Giuseppe di Lampedusa's The Leopard, which I would think another candidate for the "Great Italian Novel" (and also its author's only novel, and, indeed, about the Risorgimento.))

The Betrothed is the story of two peasants, from the village of Lecco (near Milan), Lucia and Lorenzo (called Renzo), who wish to be married. There should be no bar to this union -- the families are happy with it, and Renzo has a good job. But the most powerful man in the area, Don Rodrigo, decides he wants Lucia, and he pressures the weak local priest not to perform the wedding. With the help of a worthy nearby monk, Father Cristoforo, the two lovers are able to evade a plot of Don Rodrigo's to kidnap Lucia, and the two escape to different places: Lucia to the protection of a convent, and Renzo to Milan. 

Don Rodrigo is still searching for them, and they have their own troubles. Renzo reaches Milan as a famine continues, and he gets involved in riots, as starving people are convinced that the bakers are hoarding bread. He ends up framed as an inciter of the riots, and has to escape to Bergamo, which is under the rule of Venice. Meanwhile Lucia is working for a nun called the Signora -- an unhappy woman who was forced into the convent by her parents. This all ends up badly as the Signora betrays her location to Don Rodrigo.

Events of wider significance intervene -- in particular, war comes to Milan, and in its wake, the Plague. Meanwhile Don Rodrigo has hired a notorious criminal, here called "The Unnamed", to kidnap Lucia, with the unfortunate aid of the Signora. And Renzo has found a good position in Bergamo. But Renzo is still threatened with arrest if he enters the territory of Milan. Their relationship is further complicated by the circumstances of Lucia's escape from the Unnamed -- which seemed to her (and probably was) an answer to a prayer, which included a promise to the Virgin Mary that she would remain a virgin. Renzo and Lucia -- both unlettered -- exchange communications which are amusingly confused.

The climax of the novel is several wrenching chapters detailing the effects of the Plague. As has been noted by many readers, some of the responses to the Plague depicted here resemble only too much some of the responses to COVID. But the Bubonic Plague (at least prior to antibiotics) has far worse effects than COVID, with fatality rates on the order of 25%. And Milan is hit hardest. Manzoni is darkly satirical in portraying the political responses, and affecting in portraying the ravages of it, and the heroism of some, including Father Cristoforo. And towards the end Renzo, having survived his own bout with sickness, comes to Milan in search of Lucia ...

The Betrothed actually only covers a smallish amount of territory in Northwest Italy. But its real scope is vast. Manzoni observes the abuses of the powerful, the follies of those in the middle, the occasional stupidity of everyone. He also portrays people of great courage and virtue, many of them churchmen -- such as Father Cristoforo and a major character I haven't mentioned, Cardinal Federigo Borromeo. (Borromeo is an actual historical person, the nephew of St. Carlo Borromeo. There are many churches named for Charles Borromeo, including one just a couple of miles from my workplace. There are numerous other historical figures portrayed in this book, including the Signora (aka the Nun of Monza) and the Unnamed.) Manzoni views with his sympathetic but satiric eye the folly of politicians, and of mobs. It must be said that Renzo and Lucia are thinnish characters -- sweet and honest but not all that interesting. But Manzoni's portrayals of a host of other characters are fascinating, often hilarious, often piercing: Don Rodrigo, the Unnamed, Don Abbondio and his housekeeper Perpetua, Father Cristoforo, Donna Prassede (the silly and meddlesome woman who takes in Lucia after her rescue) and Donna Prassede's pompous husband. Like many great novels, The Betrothed mixes comedy and tragedy seamlessly, and in the end, I think, achieves its apparent goal of portraying a nation aborning, a people coming to consciousness of a possible unity that wouldn't happen for more than two centuries.