L'accordatore di Destini*
Salvio Formisano
Meridiano Zero, 2007, 154 pages
Giovanni Zucca
Translation: Karen Vincent-Jones
So what is the secret connection between
the "icy" northerner
Marco Vicentini, the owner of the Meridiano zero publishing
house in Padua (to whom we are indebted for introducing Derek Raymond/Robin
Cook- no, not that one), and that hot, vital and sometimes
tragic city, Naples? Whatever it is, after C
ane rabbioso (Rabid
Dog), the first successful ultra- noir novel by
Angelo Petrella (already discussed on europolar), here comes another
book from the same southern city that we hope will enjoy the same
success, as it deserves it. This is The Matcher
of Destinies,
the first, splendidly-titled book by Salvio Formisano, a man of many
parts who is now devoting himself (as indeed he should) to writing.
The story's first-person narrator/main
character comes back to Naples from Germany where he had been working
to ask a woman to marry him. She, however, has already written
him off. He is once more ensnared by the strange perverse charm
of this magnificent but accursed city. For days he wanders the
streets, plunges into the alleyways with their sounds and scents.
And when he needs to find a job, chance leads him to one as a private
detective. A retainer of 250 euros a month plus costs, specialising
in squalid tales of adultery. The days go by, and they are all
the same- affairs are repetitive: trailing, spying, taking photos,
providing the wronged partner with the proofs that will set the
legal machinery of separation or divorce in motion. Sometimes it's
easy, sometimes less so. The rules say he should not get involved
with either the people who commission him or with the 'subjects'
he spies on, but sometimes our detective tries to 'match' the destinies
that have lost their harmony, their balance; first of all by slightly
disguising reality, then by getting more and more involved in people's
personal lives, to the point of making the most dramatic gestures…
Just as C ane rabbioso was
pulp fiction, larger than life, provocative and 'dirty', so The
Matcher of Destinies is
polished, measured and clean. And yet, this short noir novel
(although it belongs to the genre almost by chance, not by intention),
which is philosophical and slightly metaphysical, provides a number
of deep and well-thought-out reflections on the problems of living
and our ability (or inability) to keep the reins of destiny in our
hands, and the book is worth reading just for these. This novel does
not need to attract our attention by shovelling on the dirt for page
after page. And when the main character dwells on his love of the
act of writing, we can almost glimpse the writer at work in the shadows.
And we take our leave of him with regret, hoping to read his work
again sooner or later. Because, just like his hero, "he couldn't
have done it any other way".
* The
Matcher of Destinies
