Books & Reviews Archive

*The Thin Man* (generally translated into Italian as *l’uomo ombra*) is a wealthy inventor who disappeared a few days ago, just as his secretary is murdered. These two events set in motion the classic detective story: a famous former detective (Nick, the first-person narrator) is in New York with his wife, Nora, and finds himself reluctantly drawn in by the inventor's family (his ex-wife and two children, a spoiled girl and an eccentric young man) and the missing man's lawyer. One cannot recount the plot of a mystery novel, nor its ending, of course. The story unfolds, light and shrewd, around Nick and Nora—the latter seemingly a minor character, but in reality an exceptional foil: willfully detached, ironic, and patient. Her view is that a detective should be able to find anything, even a piece of duck in an overcrowded plate of food. Then there are the inventor’s relatives: greedy, selfish, indifferent to the fate of the missing husband and father; “Aren’t they perhaps the first of a new breed of monsters?” Nora wonders. The detective story and its characters also serve as a pretext for a portrait of 1930s America, battered by the stock market crash that is not yet perceived as the profound societal upheaval it would eventually become: people continue to drink heavily, frequent nightclubs, and believe that the money can just keep circulating. The strength of Hammett’s novel is undoubtedly its narrative style. It is crafted from tight dialogue and concise sentences, all relying on a masterful use of verbs—often phrasal—characteristic of colloquial speech, though they never slide into slang. One gets the impression that Nick is in a rush, that the action moves too fast to afford lingering over descriptions and in-depth character exploration. Or is it boredom that pervades the protagonist, driving him to race through life? Why read it? It is a great classic of the detective genre, but it is also an incisive depiction of a society in crisis—one in which, however, people still manage not to be sloppy.

The book is a collection of short stories that center on the solitude of women. In the title story, the protagonist has left Nigeria to live in the United States with an uncle who attempts to molest her. The young woman flees her relatives’ home, and her American dream is shattered in an underpaid job as a waitress. She would like to write to her parents, but > there was nothing to write about... Nobody knew where you were, because you told no one. Sometimes you felt invisible..... At night, something wrapped around your neck, something that almost choked you before you fell asleep . A woman’s freedom is possible only in solitude, as only then is her destiny not determined by a man—be he husband, father, or brother. In *Tomorrow Is Too Far* (a story reminiscent of Morrison’s *Beloved*), the narrative skillfully unfolds through an alternation between present and past. The protagonist, now an adult, lives in the United States. She returns after many years to Nigeria, where, as a child, she had pushed her brother to climb a tree and then screamed that there was a venomous snake that might bite him. The boy, terrified, fell to his death. This episode will condemn the girl to remorse and exclusion, yet it was the only way, cruel and reckless, to rebel against the privileges tradition bestowed upon males: > you knew that something had to happen to Nonso (the brother) so that you could survive . Solitude also stems from fleeing a violent, yet beloved country: Nigeria. *The American Embassy* is the narrative, poised between journalistic chronicle and psychological suspension, of a long wait on “a palpitating pavement” before the American Embassy to secure an exit visa. The protagonist, with her grief “somewhere between the eyes,” seeks to leave Nigeria because the Nigerian police killed her son, still a young child. When she finds herself before the American official, the woman realizes that she cannot abandon her country, where her child is buried: she “wanted to return to their ancestral home,” to the flowers of her land, to dishes cooked with palm oil, and so “she turned slowly and walked toward the exit.” The uprooting between the bond to one’s native land and expatriation to the United States is present throughout all the stories; it does not, however, depend on a woman’s free choice, but on the will of husband and family. The primary virtue of the stories lies in their narrative structure and writing. The author makes masterly use of the second-person singular (the “you”) to keep the narration suspended between autobiography and the impersonal form. The result is a sense of inevitability, as though events could not possibly be otherwise, as though no alternative resolutions were possible, since the facts unfold beyond the will and agency of the protagonists. Life is what it is, and there are no alternatives. The prose is elegant, simple, and measured, never indulging in neologisms or national and local idioms. Indeed, with subtle malice, the writer often underscores the differing uses of vocabulary, contrasting the typically British terms the female protagonists would prefer to use (all belonging to the educated Nigerian elite) with American vernacular—as if estrangement, flight, and solitude were reflected even in the abandonment of customary forms of English. The limitation of the book lies precisely in the narrative structure of the stories, which the author fails to resolve, leaving them perpetually unfinished and suspended. What emerges is a fragmentation that makes it difficult to draw together the narrative thread and its meanings. Why read it? It is an enjoyable and interesting read.