{"id":1072,"date":"2013-07-26T17:33:02","date_gmt":"2013-07-26T23:33:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=1072"},"modified":"2013-07-26T17:59:41","modified_gmt":"2013-07-26T23:59:41","slug":"marco-vichi-death-and-the-olive-grove","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/marco-vichi-death-and-the-olive-grove\/","title":{"rendered":"Marco Vichi: Death and the Olive Grove"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cThe story had something at once horrifying and sweet about it, something he had difficulty understanding.\u201d \u2013 from <\/i>Death and the Olive Grove<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

There are a few poets who are also mystery writers \u2013 Georges Simenon, Andrea Camilleri, Colin Cotterill, Matt Beynon Rees, Louise Penny, Karin Fossom \u2013 add to that short list Marco Vichi.\u00a0 I mean poets in a spiritual sense (though Fossom is actually one).\u00a0 Vichi\u2019s blend of an almost delicate prose style with a gripping story, as well as a wider look at life, places him in that rarified company.\u00a0 What makes this book special is that it\u2019s thought provoking as well as hard to put down.<\/p>\n

\"deathandtheolivegrove\"<\/a>Vichi\u2019s books are set in Florence \u2013 this is the second in a series, just now being translated.\u00a0 Three are being released this year, all on different platforms.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t matter to me as I was reading this one that it was the third, as it stands nicely on its own.<\/p>\n

His hero is one Inspector Bordelli, who tears around the Florence of 1964 in his noisy VW beetle, smoking cigarettes and scaring the life out of his assistant, a Sicilian named Piras.\u00a0 I imagine Vichi set his books during this time period so he could include flashbacks to the war, at that time a not so distant memory that had affected everyone in Europe profoundly.\u00a0 Bordelli is a veteran and his memories are frequently disturbing ones.<\/p>\n

However, as readers we\u2019re treated to the whole texture of Bordelli\u2019s life, which includes cooking, lady friends, and a dwarf named Casimiro whose death Bordelli is trying to solve.\u00a0 He\u2019s also trying to solve a string of killings of young girls, with very little success or much in the matter of leads.\u00a0 That\u2019s the horrifying part of the story.<\/p>\n

As Bordelli, slowly becoming an exhausted wreck, tries to come up with a lead, he encounters as old acquaintance, a Nazi hunter named Levi.\u00a0 Their paths converge at a certain point, and mutual respect and a healthy hatred of Nazis on both of their parts allows them to walk the same path, however unsteadily at times.<\/p>\n

Piras gives him a few leads merely by thinking in a straight forward fashion.\u00a0 Bordelli\u2019s thinking is almost operatic in its complexity, though his hunger for justice is as straight forward as Piras\u2019 thought process.<\/p>\n

Bordelli\u2019s journey through space and time encompasses the war, his childhood,\u00a0 Florence, and the comfortable companionship of a talented if chatty cook named Toto and a retired prostitute named Rosa.\u00a0 There are thoughts on the change washing machines will bring to Italy, how tiny a speck we are in the galaxy, why he hates Nazis, cooking, love and spaghetti.\u00a0 This is a delicious novel, through and through.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe story had something at once horrifying and sweet about it, something he had difficulty understanding.\u201d \u2013 from Death and the Olive Grove There are a few poets who are also mystery writers \u2013 Georges Simenon, Andrea Camilleri, Colin Cotterill, Matt Beynon Rees, Louise Penny, Karin Fossom \u2013 add to that short list Marco Vichi.\u00a0 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[11],"class_list":["post-1072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1072"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1075,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072\/revisions\/1075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}