Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio, by Amara Lakhous

I've had Class of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio for a few years now. I know I got it before the pandemic because I picked it up at my old favorite thrift store near the office, which I haven't visited since March 2020. It reading was this "Read Your Way through Rome" column that prompted me to finally get around to it, though I read that article a couple months ago – before I visited Rome in November – and I really only got around to it today because I wanted to get one last book in for 2022. It was short and I had read about it somewhat recently. 

I thought I was going to return to Vladimir and just get it done – something I'd been telling myself I'd do since I set it aside after 2 days of reading it voraciously in early April. I did go back and read one more chapter of it, but I couldn't do it. I feel that the intensity of my feelings actually say something positive about the book, so others shouldn't take this as a warning to stay away. I just... I knew where it was going and I couldn't go there.

So after that brief flirtation, and with a free afternoon ahead of me, I decided to find another book I could read in a few hours and feeling nostalgic for my recent trip to Rome and the Times article, I landed on Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio. The story takes place in the wake of the discovery of a body in titular elevator, and the police's assumption that the one resident of the building who is not accounted for – a man named Amedeo – must be the murderer. Each chapter is told from the point of view of one of the other tenants and others in the neighborhood, a mix of immigrants from abroad and Italians who have, for the most part, moved to Rome from other parts of the country. The residents mostly dislike each other, but it turns out that Amedeo is the one person they all have some affection for. They all have prejudices, but he seems to confound them. None believes he can be the murderer. Meanwhile, the murdered man is someone nobody likes. They're all glad to see him gone. These chapters are interspersed with recordings Amedeo himself has made recounting his own interactions with the residents. This was a fun book showing an Italian diversity that's not often represented.

So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood, by Patrick Modiano

I moved a week ago today. I've been living without most of my books since early October when I boxed them up and moved them ahead of the big move. This morning I set up my bookshelves (three of them at least) and unpacked my 18 boxes of fiction. It's wonderful to be reunited with these books. I've spent the bulk of the last week unpacking and organizing, so after lunch I decided to give myself the afternoon off to read one of my newly close-at-hand books. For reasons I can't exactly articulate, or maybe just reasons I don't want to go into at the moment, Patrick Modiano was the clear choice. I had kept out another book of his – a trilogy, in fact, in a single volume – but I decided to pick a book I could read in one sitting. 

So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood is just 150 pages, which was the primary reason I chose it. I hadn't realized it was a relatively recent book (2014) and I was caught off guard when a reference to a mobile phone showed up in the first paragraphs, but true to what I expected from Modiano, the heart of the book is in the past, in those early post War years in Paris. The narrator is an old man who is thrust back into memories of his childhood and early adulthood following an encounter with a pair of mysterious strangers. The book takes place in three distinct times: 1951 when the narrator was a young child; 15 years later when he is unexpectedly reconnected with that childhood year; and 2012 when it all comes back again. Modiano gets to the heart of memory and loss like nobody, and this book is an excellent example of that.

Martha, Jack & Shanco, by Caryl Lewis

It's been so long since I finished a book. I've started books; I've even made significant progress in books; but I haven't finished a book since early October. Goodreads thinks I'm "currently reading" six books, but there are at least a couple more that I've started and not recorded. The vast majority of my books have already been moved to my future home, where I will move myself in a week, but I have a small selection I kept here because I might want to read them and several have a bookmark to note where I abandoned my intentions. I do think my impending move is partly responsible for the fact that I haven't been a good reader these last several months. I've had a lot on my mind. But I also worry that I've lost the discipline I once had. We'll see as I get settled in my new place I guess.

Even in early October I was struggling to finish most of the books I started, but I was determined to read the (fortunately short) book selected for my Women in Translation book club. It's thanks to that book club that I've finished Martha, Jack & Shanco too. (Give me a deadline and a sense of obligation and I can accomplish anything,)

Martha, Jack & Shanco is the second Welsh novel I've read. Several years ago I read a Welsh novel called Mifanwy in a rush at the end of the year to get in one more country and one pre-20th Century book all in one go. Martha, Jack & Shanco is set in present day (or the present day of the book's original publication which was 2005), but the book's titular characters aren't living so differently than they might have a hundred years earlier. The three past middle age siblings live on a farm in rural Wales where they raise sheep, keep dairy cows, grow barley and hay, and speak Welsh. Jack, the oldest, is domineering and bitter; Shanco, the youngest, is intellectually disabled; and Martha takes care of them all. The book spans one year of their lives, measured by the seasonal changes on the farm and marked with the occasional incursion of the world outside. This was a dark but lovely book.