Two unsolved crimes, irony, Sicily. In “Girls too curious” (Bompiani) returns Rosa Lentini, the investigator (by chance) created by Nino Motta alias Paolo Di Stefano
After Pizzuta’s hairdresser (2017), philology and irony also characterize the new investigation by Rosa Lentini, a scholar inserted at the university who, however, disappointed with that environment, is now more passionate about cases left without guilty. In Too curious girls by Nino Motta (Bompiani, pp. 240, euro 17), even the action restarts a few months after the one that had led to the resolution of a cold case from 1956 in the imaginary Sicilian town of Pizzuta, where Rosa and her mother Evelina move from Milan for the summer holidays. But above all, in the new novel, to verify some information discovered by their friend Don Ciccio Drago, ex-commander of the carabinieri, about two murders that took place in 1974. The first is that of Angelo Valvo, engineer and then antiquarian linked to the environments of the insurrectionary right, a character with a restless life full of mysteries. And just as he investigates that death, writing precise and controversial pieces, the young journalist Wanda Girlando is killed, apparently for love reasons but perhaps because she was coming to uncomfortable truths. Rosa, a scholar-investigator, is used to examining manuscripts according to strict principlesfor the preparation of the “coat of arms codicum”, the graphic that indicates the relationships between the various witnesses of a work. But inconsistencies seem to prevail in life and the details are never placed in the right place: thousands of pages prepared by the investigators on the Valvo and Girlando cases have not led to any definitive results.
Rosa’s first motivation, in fact, is not to demonstrate greater skill in examining judicial papers, but to right the wrongs, discovering for example what really happened to Wanda. So here is that the philologist, in her police investigation, must overcome obstacles and reticence,interrogating witnesses several times, noticing inconsistencies that finally lead to a significant trace. In doing this, with the help of Evelina he immerses himself in many areas of Sicily great, between Catania, Syracuse and Ragusa, the provinces that declared themselves far from the mafias, and instead welcomed forms of crime and collusion even at unsuspected levels. But it is not a crime of denunciation or controversy that we should expect from the pages of Too curious girls (although based on authentic documents), but rather a smiling and bitter recognition of some Sicilian traits that have long been a metaphor for Italic ones in general.
It is therefore necessary to make explicit what many readers already know, namely that the author indicated on the cover, Nino Motta, is a heteronym of Paolo Di Stefano,having previously been the main character in a 2003 novel of his, All happy. Also in the latter the protagonist returns from Lombardy to his Sicily to investigate, by questioning former companions, about a disappearance that concerned him, that of Santino Rocco, a child whose death, perhaps due to an accident, Nino had caused. Furthermore, since 2020, with the release of Noi, a broad autobiographical narrative and precise family fresco, Di Stefano has manifested strictly personal aspects of this returning, through the various stories, to some constant nuclei, for example those of unjust deaths and the need for do everything to understand why.
After all, Rosa, like Nino, constitutes another face of an incessant search: one would like to achieve the certainty that “everything is held” and that the chaotic set of incongruent relationships can be reduced to an essential graph,after eliminating the superfluous, the useless noise of repetitions. But the doubt remains that the patient collection of testimonies and the curious passion for what most have escaped are not yet sufficient to understand the “contaminations” that often occur in human relationships as well as, in philology, between manuscript and manuscript: it seems that even the great critic Gianfranco Contini liked to repeat that the hidden facts remain far more than the best ecdotic analysis can illuminate.
Philological rigor must therefore be married to the alienating flexibility of irony. And Motta-Di Stefano puts a lot of irony in his story – on the many Sicilian stereotypes (honor, horns …) and also on the many stereotypes on stereotypes – perhaps quoting Gadda and Camilleri or playing on etymologies and para-etymologies. Rosa Lentini notes in many ways how difficult it is to reconcile the tension to know exactly the data and facts,and the need to deal with the infinite variables of an existence: even his own, fluid and marked by relations with “divorced” men, always ready to disappear, and with his now autonomous and not very sympathetic adolescent daughter. But precisely her humorous spirit allows the protagonist, in alliance with her mother, willing pupil and helper, to surpass even the strongest chess pieces and to go forward with an air and with some dose of rebellion compared to what everyone would expect from her.
It is then possible, in conclusion, to understand a lot of the crimes of 1974 and yet further mysteries arise, for example regarding another young woman, Teresa Carullo, who had already tried to shed light on those facts and had almost succeeded, but then going to meet an early death. Just what she had conjectured allows us to start the investigation towards a solution, and however suspicions emerge in the queue about what really happened to her. The “too curious girls”, such as Wanda had been, can receive posthumous compensation thanks to the bitterness of the philologist-detective Rosa, but her final codicum coat of arms leaves room for uncertainty. Basically, philology does not lead to a truth but to a plausible hypothesis on the basis of the data that have come down to usand, if his method is applied to existences, unfortunately it is very much what remains unverifiable. For this reason Paolo Di Stefano, in the production of fiction, practices different types of writing, each of which faces the events from its own angle. Here, among treacherous texts and clever misdirections, we follow the tasty and ironic reconstructions of one of his most successful avatar characters, the disenchanted and fervent seeker of justice (and perhaps, for herself, of some small happiness) Rosa Lentini.
June 17, 2022 (change June 17, 2022 | 10:50 am)
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