The Shape of Water - (not the fish-man film) - June 2020 Book Group discussion thread
11 watchers
May 2020
3:28pm, 26 May 2020
45,472 posts
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McGoohan
Andrea Calimari likes nothing better than a lovely fish supper with squid rings and thick cut chips. Lots of salt and vinegar and eaten from the paper. Mmm-mm. By contrast, his pal, Andrea Camilleri writes the adventures of detective Savlon Monty Balloon who solves food-crimes. Y'know, like Rosemary and Thyme off the telly. Only in Italian. His first Savlon novel was Shaky in the Water about Shakin' Stevens taking swimming lessons from the Krankies. I think that's what it's about, but I admit I only skimmed it. Now read on! |
Jun 2020
5:28pm, 5 Jun 2020
4,061 posts
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westmoors
Started this and read about 40% in one go. Then didn't get a chance to read again for several days. Read another huge chunk. Then a few more days before I got to sit down again to finish it. Found it a relatively easy read once I'd got my head round the names. Can't say I particularly enjoyed it, or disliked it.
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Jun 2020
1:15am, 6 Jun 2020
17,945 posts
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Serendippily
Not my favourite. Made me think back quite fondly for Maigret - I think I prefer morose detectives. I didn’t think much of the stripping females or the savlon and gauze for a twisted ankle. The ‘street’ language was downright painful. And the translation felt weirdly florid. There wasn’t really anyone I took a shine too. And I guessed the plot, tangled as it was. Next.
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Jun 2020
5:15pm, 7 Jun 2020
37,567 posts
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LindsD
Hm. I have just given this a 6 because everyone else has. I was going to put 5, but I think 5.5 is probably more accurate. I liked a lot about this. I liked the story, I liked Montalbano (which you are obviously supposed to). But.... it was all very rushed. I would have liked more exposition, a bit more time to work it out myself. It seemed also a bit overly compicated. Why the bloody neck brace? So that Montalbano can prove without any doubt that it's your man? I was convinced by his grief. And the names were bloody annoying, especially on a Kindle where it's more difficult to look back. I did like the way that everything was resolved, and I think he'd be an easy character to get into, but I also thought I could just as well read a Christopher Brookmyre or an Ian Rankin. I was very aware of judging the translation, but it's hard to know without seeing the original. There was one translation choice that I actually criticised out loud - why did he say 'dawdle' when he was obviously pottering? He wasn't dawdling at all. Was it for the American market? I did think the cultural references were dealt with quite well (I wrote my PhD on the translation of cultural references). I think I might read another one of these to see if it settles down a bit. I felt a bit out of breath by the end. |
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Jun 2020
5:16pm, 7 Jun 2020
37,568 posts
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LindsD
Yes, me too for Maigret, Dipps.
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Jun 2020
8:31am, 8 Jun 2020
45,670 posts
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McGoohan
This was a bit of an oddity. I don't usually read detective fiction so I sometimes feel a bit lost reading: they can be a bit like a cryptic crossword where knowing how the clues work is half the battle. It's being marketed as a bit *more* than a standard procedural though, as if we'll get a feel for Sicily at the same time. There was much less of this than I expected, though a sort of background suggestion of the workings of the Mafia. I'm also quite interested in reading fiction in translation. If you like it, was the original good or has a great translator polished a turd? If you don't like it, maybe a bad translation has ruined a classic? I'm not a speaker or reader of Italian so I can only guess but here I think it's a fairly poor translation. There's a sort of 'I am liking you very much' awkwardness to some of the sentences. The story itself then. I don't know if it's the era the book is from (1994 when first published in Italy) but women are only described by their assets and the language seems routinely sexist and homophobic. Yet I don't think we ever get a clear description of what Montalbano looks like. I scored it a six in the end. It wasn't great but wasn't terrible. |
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Jun 2020
9:03am, 8 Jun 2020
37,592 posts
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LindsD
I would be surprised if it's a poor translation given the popularity of the stories and TV. If it was poor, I would expect a different translator to have been used for later stories and a retranslation to have been commissioned. I'll ask a colleague what they think. I think those awkward choices must have been deliberate. But I don't know.
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Jun 2020
8:57pm, 8 Jun 2020
19,860 posts
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Columba
I can see that it's a clever story, and I can see that Sicily is potentially a fertile ground for crime stories. That being said, it didn't grip me, and the huge plethora of names was very distracting. I listed them as I went along, and kept having to refer back ("who was that one, again?") so the story didn't really have a chance to carry me along. Nothing more to say about it, really. |
Jun 2020
1:10pm, 9 Jun 2020
49,624 posts
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Diogenes
I'm about half way through, I'm quite a fan of detective fiction, but I am not enjoying the style of this one at all. Most of the characters seem like playground bullies trying to sound hard, I don't believe in them as real policeman or criminals, although Montalbano is the the best of them. I suspect it is trying to give a sense of what it is like to live on Sicily, but, for me at least, it fails completely. Perhaps if I lived there it would be familiar, but it's not working for me as a stranger. I can't remember exactly when this is set but people are telephoning one another all the time and dropping around at odd hours.
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Jun 2020
9:43pm, 13 Jun 2020
49,790 posts
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Diogenes
This sentence pulled me up short “The nipple seemed to be looking around, curious about the unfamiliar surroundings.”
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