Michele Guard, two detective stories that seem one in two Sicilies that are the same – Corriere.it

2024-01-30 16:20:26

by FRANCO MANZONI

With the new novel La ciantona (Baldini + Castoldi), the author and director Rai has fun and entertains us with a double intrigue

A truly complicated pastime even for the most skilled of writers. That of completing two detective stories at the same time, chronologically separated by seventy years. More than a game, if anything, a test of value. Too easy to fall into enigmas, qui pro quos and hilarious ambiguities. In particular when, in the fragmentary nature of existence, due to inevitable carelessness we begin to mix events from the 1950s with episodes from today. the role that Michele Guard carves out for a multifaceted author who is the protagonist of his new novel La ciantona (Baldini + Castoldi).

Now in his third narrative work after Fimminedda released in 2017 and Il polentone in 2023, Guard, the famous director and face of Rai television, sets the events in the remote village of Castroianni and composes a concrete depiction of the Sicilian world, a prism and a way of understanding the an existence where, despite the passing of decades, everything changes because nothing changes, the witnesses always remain reticent, the culprits cannot be found, reality mostly turns into fiction, everyone wears their own mask. A philosophical thought that is also found in Luigi Pirandello, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Leonardo Sciascia and Andrea Camilleri. For better or for worse in Sicily.

Divided into twenty-one chapters and dedicated to parents to whom I didn’t have time to give the joy of fully seeing that many of those dreams of mine that worried them weren’t so unrealizable after all, La ciantona begins in the café in the village, where bring together the different characters of the two novels. But, speaking over each other, they create indescribable chaos. The meaning of the title refers to a neologism that Guard assures is from the Castroianni dialect, which in Italian means din. Meanwhile, the café is invaded by two-coloured figures, since for his own convenience the author has decided to dress those he makes act in the 1950s in black, and those of his contemporaries in white. You should therefore not run the risk of making mistakes. However, the same thing happens several times, creating multiple and sometimes ridiculous misunderstandings.

This is a clever literary device by Guard, which mixes compassion and pity towards men, humorous derision of their destiny, obtaining a stimulating enhancement of the narrative mechanism. Thus the reader is trapped in following a double plot that is visionary. Just as two carabinieri, distant in time, are absurdly investigating two unlikely murders committed in different eras in the same office. A jumble from which it is not easy to extricate oneself.

Among the whites, first of all is Brigadier Amenta who, while following the astonishing creations of the surveyor Miccich, an inventor struck by Leonardo da Vinci’s complex, is notified on his cell phone that the Prime Minister has been indicted for having carried out vulgar acts together with about twenty minors, but above all who killed Giuseppe Sorce in his villa, called by the people Beppe Rapina for the scams and frauds committed. The brigadier rushes to question Carmela Culotta, Sorce’s wife, a prosperous thirty-six year old known in the village for the maximum sexual freedom that she bestowed on some of her fellow countrymen, just to make her husband an emeritus cuckold. And of course for the sake of giving himself to her pleasure. Amenta can’t do anything other than observe the crime scene. Having established that the naked corpse, with a knife stuck in his back, proceeds to interrogate the widow, who hypothesizes that Rapina killed himself. A practically impossible suicide.

Continuing to proclaim her innocence, Culotta is accused. Therefore they call the lawyer Caldara as public defender. The author puts white clothes on all these characters. Nonetheless, to further complicate the plot, Marshal Sconci appears in what he believes to be his police station. He too is dealing with an unsolved murder with dark implications. Two detective stories in search of the guilty. Despite arguing over possession of the office, Sconci agrees with the sergeant to divide it: in the morning the marshal of the 1950s, in the afternoon Amenta in white clothes. The confusion certainly increases. Other distractions escape the author’s mind: the lawyer Caldara is called to the old landline number by Gianfranco Bettetini to invite him as a competitor to Leave or Double, as he is registered for the quiz. Actually not him, but his grandfather in 1957.

There is an air of disconnect between the author and his two-tone characters, ready to rebel. Guard just has to pit them against each other in a tight finale.

The author

Michele Guard, author and director of some of the most well-known Rai programmes, has written for cabaret and for the radio. For the theater he wrote the text of the modern musical work I Promessi Sposi and Il caso Tandoj. In fiction, Guard made his debut in 2017 with Fimminedda (Sperling & Kupfer), followed in 2023 by Il polentone (Baldini + Castoldi).

January 30, 2024 (modified January 30, 2024 | 5:19 pm)

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