Cronache di Bassavilla*
Danilo Arona
Dario Flaccovio Editore• 2006
Giovanni
Zucca
Translation : Karen Vincent-Jones
If noir is,
among other things, the realm of anxiety, then Bassavilla could
certainly be its capital. If only because of the Harmonic Major
that passes through it…
But let's take things in order. Bassavilla,
as we know, does not exist. Or rather, it does exist, and it is only
too easy to find out its name when we venture into the pages of this
strange and intriguing novel published by an (almost former) small
publishing house like Flaccovio. This novel was runner-up for the
Scerbanenco Prize that was won in 2006 by Incontro
a Daunanda,
by Giancarlo Narciso (same publisher) which has also featured on
Europolar.
A novel? In fact this is not so much a novel
as a collection of stories, originally published on a website, Carmilla,
(www.carmillaonline.it)
devoted to cultural resistance, and then put together and reworked
by Danilo Arona. Who lives in Bassavilla (alias…) and is a journalist,
writer and … chaser of legends ? Investigator of nightmares ? It's
not easy to define him with any precision. Let us say that, for some
years now, Arona has been interested in the kind of stories that
don't make it on to the front page. Strange, odd, worrying stories….
Stories of motorists (steady people, respectable, never overcome
by alcoholic vapours) who claim that they ran over, or just missed,
in the dead of night, a young girl who was walking down the middle
of the carriageway. Terrified, in shock, they stop to help… and find
nobody. Neither living or dead. Or even something between the two … Gradually,
a name emerges, Melissa. The name of a soft porn starlet. Of a girl
who apparently drowned herself in Bassavilla, in the 1920s. Of a
computer virus that spread through the Internet in 1999 and infected,
blocked and damaged hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of computers
all over the world. Soaking wet ghosts, who call for help and then… disappear.
I know that some people are already
shaking their heads, thinking that this is the umpteenth pseudo
New Age potboiler about angels and supernatural beings… but no, hell, we are talking about a novel
here. But… every line of this book exudes the essence of noir. It
tells of an inexistent but very real town with its streets, its rivers
and its mists. Mists that shroud its mysteries. Mysteries that sometimes
defy explanation … But mysteries that did have witnesses, that appeared
in the local paper, mysteries that involved psychiatrists, specialists,
journalists, the police. Two little girls dying of fright in an amusement
park… A girl dying in her sleep, in bed, her internal organs crushed
... as if she had been run over by a car…or several cars… at the
same time… in different, widely dispersed places… and that's without
mentioning this cursed Harmonic Major, that sets free certain forces,
and powers, and special gifts… That also reveals things that ought
not, that must not, be seen …
Stop. I've said too much. Or else not
enough…
Oh, no, one more thing. Even if you can, don't go to Bassavilla.
But if you really want to go there, take Danilo Arona, and this book,
with you.
If you don't, you can't say I didn't warn you.
* Chronicles of Bassavilla
