Francesco Recami

Amedeo Consonni, the novel's protagonist, has been retired for many years and lives in Milan in a *casa di ringhiera*, built at the beginning of the twentieth century around a rectangular courtyard and now housing twenty flats. It is a «curious microcosm» bearing traces of industrial architecture, today severely deteriorated: crumbling stucco, dilapidated plaster, window frames—traditionally wooden and now replaced by others in anodized aluminum, in silver and brass tones—not to mention the numerous TV satellite dishes mounted on the railings, imparting a sense of globalized «squalor» > . On the surface, Consonni’s life is typical of a retired widower: tidying his small, comfortable flat each day, going to the supermarket and cooking his meals alone, reading the newspaper accompanied by an afternoon nap, exchanging a few words with the neighbors, and looking after his young grandson on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But Consonni harbors a strange hobby: he loves collecting crime news, cutting out any article concerning murders from the papers and archiving these clippings in binders meticulously ordered by crime. Over time, he has begun investigating in the field unbeknownst to the police. Alongside Consonni’s pastime, somewhat perverse yet harmless, Recami depicts the other inhabitants of the tenement: in particular, a family of four (father, mother, and two boys), where the man is frequently drunk and violent, the eccentric and noisy couple next door, and the octogenarian madly devoted to his old car. From reading this detailed and fascinating portrait of this microcosm > one might think we are in the presence of a novel of manners in which the detective plot is merely a device; Consonni’s investigation into a recent, savage, and mysterious crime is intriguing, yet the narrative seems aimed more at describing the character than at offering us the suspense and intrigue expected of a noir novel. When, suddenly, the murder of a female tenant sets off a shocking and astonishing sequence of events, entangling the inhabitants of our microcosm. Without giving away the ending—a genuine plot twist—we can say that the unfolding of events confirms how we Italians, all of us, even children, have, or think we have, something to hide, and in any case want to say nothing to the police. I read the novella in one breath". In the first part, I was captivated by the physical and social setting of the *casa di ringhiera*, almost suspended out of time: one need only think of the minute description of Consonni’s apartment with its nineteenth-century wallpapers, or the rivalries and petty slights over parking in the courtyard. In the second part, the narrative pace gathers speed and we cannot put the book down, eager to read the next episode. The narration is punctuated by suspenseful hints of dramatic twists, skillfully crafted to fuel the desire to press on, much like in a serialized novel. The prose is refined and succeeds in blending everyday speech with dialectal idioms, thereby conjuring the nostalgic atmosphere that pervades the tale. It is a minor gem that marries the novel of manners with noir, alongside a pleasing vocabulary and elegant syntactic construction. Why read it? It is intriguing and well written.

I read Recami’s *La Casa di Ringhiera* in one breath (see review on this site), finding it one of the finest noirs in the vast panorama of Italian literature: the felicitous conjunction of a comedy of manners with the pacing typical of the best detective fiction. That is why, as soon as I read the review of *Il mostro del Casoretto*, I rushed out to buy it, anticipating the pleasure I had experienced with *La Casa di Ringhiera*. Perhaps because my expectations were so high, the disappointment proved all the more painful. The book is a collection of short stories which, with the exception of the last, feature the pensioner Amedeo Consonni, the grandfatherly detective. In the first story, *Il mostro del Casoretto*, Consonni is accused of sexually molesting a young girl; to punish him, the child’s relatives lock him in an abandoned farmhouse to make him pay. Consonni manages to break free, but is persuaded by Angela—whom we discover to be his aging sweetheart—to return to the scene of his captivity so the police can catch his tormentors red-handed. It is a flimsy plot, relying on salacious situations rather than narrative twists and social atmosphere. The second story, *Chi ha pane non ha denti, chi ha denti non ha pane*, is undoubtedly the most pleasant of the collection. Here we find the return of several characters and situations already familiar from *La Casa di Ringhiera*: Mr. De Angelis holds a grudge against a neighbor’s dog that keeps urinating on the wheels of his BMW, and decides to lock the animal inside an abandoned cold-storage unit in the building’s basement. It will be Gianmarco and Margherita, two children from the tenement, who inadvertently free the little dog, sparing De Angelis an indictment for pet theft and animal cruelty. It is a light and wry tale, in which Consonni returns to being the kindly grandfather figure. Later, perhaps at a loss for how to further develop the world of the tenement, Recami departs from the Lombard setting, moving the stories to Florence and Sardinia, with Consonni cast as the victim of misunderstandings. It is pointless to dwell on these stories. The verdict cannot be anything but harsh. The stories lack both plot and character development. Consonni emerges reduced to the figure of a lecherous, rather foolish old man who takes Viagra to engage in sexual intercourse, with the sole result of being caught in his underpants with an erect male member (why insist on such vulgarities?). His girlfriend Angela is a stout woman still in pursuit of sex, and the relationship between Amedeo and the lady bears none of the grace found in the poems of an elderly Ungaretti, still capable of falling in love: > you appeared at the doorway/in a red dress(...) it was on a Monday/to hold hands/and speak happily/no refuge was found/save in a sad garden/of the convulsive city . (September 12, 1966, from the collection *Ungà 1966-1968*). How difficult it is to chronicle the affections and dreams of us old folk! Why read it? It is a disappointment.