The Great Swindle by Pierre Lemaitre

The cover blurb describes this as a masterly epic of post-war France.’ It’s quite a compelling read, though perhaps not masterly. The story begins in the WWI trenches, with descriptions of the horrors that remind me of Pat Barker’s novels about that war. Emerging from this horror are three characters, the dastardly bastardly Henri, officer but not gentleman; the effete, cynical Edouard; and the lowly bumbling mouse of a man, Albert. Albert and Edouard are more or less bonded for life because of the events that happen in the trenches and they work together to create the great swindle of the title. The book is as much a commentary on the corruption of the wealthy, on greed, and on the devastating impact of war as is it about the swindle. It’s shocking, dark of mood but an accomplished page turner.

The Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi) by Alessandro Manzoni

I understand now why there is a street in every Italian city called Via Manzoni. This is the Italian classic novel. While the English were producing Bronte and Austen and Blake and the French Moliere, Hugo and Dumas, the Italians produced Manzoni, the father of Italian romantic literature. This is a whacking great novel , 700 odd pages, that traces the unhappy journeys of two innocent peasants Lucia and Renzo as they go on the run from a despotic warlord, Don Rodrigo, who wishes to despoil Lucia’s innocence. But it is much much more than a romance. Their separate journeys take them through the plagues, the wars, the famines, and the riots of the 1600s; not only that, Manzoni also lays into the politicians, the judiciary, the church and the aristocracy as the young innocents come face to face with them. I am ready to suggest that it’s one of the first in the much maligned historical fiction genre. And it’s fascinating, utterly fascinating. It takes some reading and I could only manage a chapter, maybe two, at a time because of the density of the commentary about whatever aspect of society was attracting Manzoni’s attention at the time. The lovers really became insignificant as I read on, so absorbed was I by the descriptions of what life was actually like during the plague, with the spectre of the dreadful ‘anointers’, and so forth. I’m told Italian school children used to read half of this book one year, and the other half the next, better to absorb its lessons perhaps. It’s no wonder then that all the Italians I know are so attuned to the polemic!