Daughter of Ashes is the third and possibly final instalment in Italian author Ilaria Tuti’s Teresa Battaglia series. It follows on from Painted in Blood in 2022, which was also published as The Sleeping Nymph. This bittersweet conclusion takes place a mere 20 days after the close of the Sleeping Nymph case and is set in the Italian Alps.
In Daughter of Ashes, past and present merge when Teresa Battaglia – now in her mid-60s and at a crossroads in her career – is forced to confront her past, both figuratively and literally.
On 4 March 2016 23-year-old Luca Varani was brutally murdered in an apartment on the outskirts of Rome by Marco Prato and Manuel Foffo. One of Italy’s most renowned novelists, Nicola Lagioia, explores the factors that led to the murder that shocked Rome and the rest of Italy. What motivated two young men, apparently from good families, to violently torture and kill another young man?
The City of the Living is the result of an in-depth study of the circumstances surrounding the murder and the profiles and, backgrounds of the two perpetrators and the victim. As Lagioia pieces together the specifics of this real-life crime, an unsettling picture of Rome’s current socioeconomic situation also emerges.
In Rome, chaos and decay reign, while tourists flock to see the city’s sights. Lagioia describes the city he now lives in as “… unlivable and yet teeming with life, overrun by rats and wild animals and plagued by corruption, drugs and violence.” Rats scurry from sewers, cross streets, and go into stores as a result of the absence of proper administration, including garbage removal.
“Rome was violent on a psychic level …you breathed a tense, angry air… all the despair, bitterness, arrogance, brutality, sense of failure that filled the city were concentrated on one point.”
The inhabitants of Rome did as they pleased, regardless of the consequences, creating a climate of lawlessness. This was the most evident in the youth who were frustrated with a lack of future and didn’t have the will to change their circumstances. The glamorous lifestyle they often longed for was unattainable, even for someone from the more fortunate middle-class. Their solution? Drugs and alcohol, thereby creating the illusion of wealth and happiness. This in turn lead to a lack of social responsibility, accountability for their actions and a non-existent moral compass. When you add simmering resentment and anger to an already explosive situation, senseless violence isn’t as farfetched and unfathomable anymore.
Manuel Foffo still lacked direction in his late 20s. Although he had ambitious plans for developing a football app, it never materialised. Conversations with Manuel and those close to him revealed that he placed the blame for his actions entirely on others. He resented his father because he prefered his brother, because he forced him to study law, because he gave away his scooter… He went so far as to blame his drinking, drug use and change in personality on his father because he didn’t give him the car he wanted. Manuel described his mother as a psychopath, uncultured, and paranoid schizophrenic. Ironically, a psychiatrist’s assessment of Manual revealed that he exhibited narcissistic and paranoid traits.
On Rome’s gay scene, 29-year-old Marco Prato was a well-liked and dynamic club promoter. Marco’s father, an arts administrator, adored his son, while his mother struggled to accept his homosexuality. Marco also refused to accept responsibility for his role in Luca’s murder and blamed his actions on his childhood and his parents. After his sister was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy when he was seven, Marco felt neglected. He was also the more charming and cunning of the two men. Friends said he could switch from being empathetic to acting malicious in the space of one sentence and he excelled in exploiting the flaws he saw in others.
Marco and Manuel first met two months before the murder at a New Year’s Eve party and then briefly again for a glass of wine. It was entirely coincidental that they ended up together in a flat doing coke for three days straight. That they murdered Luca was even more shocking. During their drug-fuelled frenzy, they sent out multiple SMS invites to their party; most people declined, others had a lucky, narrow escape.
What compelled Marco and Manuel to commit an unplanned, non-premeditated murder? Was it worth destroying their and the lives of their parents for? These weren’t men from poor families, children of thieves or drug addicts—they simply had no excuse for their actions.
On the other hand, the adopted Luca Varani came from a less fortunate family. His father was a travelling sweets and dried fruit vendor, and the family lived outside of Rome. Luca was a mechanic who frequently gambled and was perpetually short on cash. He may have been more susceptible to compliance due to his social class, financial precarity, lifestyle, character, and lack of skills, making him an easy target for two cunning men with superiority complexes who were completely devoid of empathy.
The City of the Living is a chilling account of a true crime that, despite Lagioia’s extensive research and search for the truth, still feels completely senseless and incomprehensible. For the most part, it reads like a gripping novel, to the point where you’ll need to remind yourself that this is a real story and Luca Varani’s death was an irrefutable tragedy. For those who enjoy true crime, crime fiction, or want to learn more about Rome’s seedier side, The City of the Living will undoubtedly capture your attention, but it will also leave you disillusioned with life’s injustice and inequality.
City of the Living is published by Europa Editions and I received a NetGalley review copy. The translation from Italian was done by Ann Goldstein.
Meet Veronica, or rather Verika as her mother insists on calling her, a curious child from a quirky family that will make Augusten Burroughs’ household seem ordinary. A household where there was always noise, whether it was never a moment of silence, whether it was a tv blaring, a vacuum cleaner, drill, hair dryer or circular saw. Not even the night was quiet. In this family, everyone was a big snorer.
Even their home itself was odd. Verika’s father had an obsession with dividing up rooms. The family of four shared a 60-square-metre apartment that he converted into three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, a dinette, a veranda and two bathrooms, as well as a long tunnel of overhead storage that ran the length of the flat, lowering the ceiling.
Verika appears to be the most normal member of the dysfunctional family. According to her parents her brother is a genius, while the best that could be said for her was that she could draw—something that wasn’t even true, but stuck with her over the years. Despite her ordinariness, she has an almost naïve and romanticised perspective on the world. She once tried to flee to Paris after watching too many French films, but her plans were foiled by an ex-boyfriend. When a flasher exposes himself to her on her way to school, she’s shocked by what she sees, because surely it can’t be normal?
“..what if the man in the raincoat had been trying to tell me he was sick? What if it was a cry for help? Otherwise, why on earth would he have shown it to me?”
When she auditions for a role as a film extra, the director tells her that he won’t be able to work with her because her face changes with each shot. Similarly, her mother, Francesca, never appears to recognise her. Every time they agree to meet in a coffee shop, Verika arrives to find her mother embracing another woman, convinced that it is her daughter and eventually befriending the fake-Verika.
Francesca is a nervous woman who delights in suffering and misery and enjoys torturing her daughter with her neuroses. Her personality is summed up perfectly in the novel’s first lines from Verika: “My brother dies several times a month. It’s always my mother who phones to inform me of his passing.” Francesca had no respect for personal space, and despite her daughter being an adult, she frequently tracks her down wherever she is. As a result, the phrase “Francesca’s on the phone” becomes a running gag among Verika’s student friends, eventually becoming code for “someone you don’t want to talk to.”
Verika’s mother isn’t the strangest of the two parents. While Francesca suffered from severe anxiety, her father was leaning towards the paranoid end of the spectrum. Instead of talking in a normal tone, he would scream, often frightening Verika’s friends. When upset, he would exclaim:
“We’ve reached the height of paradox!”
Following the Chernobyl disaster, the family found themselves in a post-apocalyptic world where contamination was unavoidable. Aside from wiping everything down with alcohol, her father insisted on only eating canned food and no fresh food, no milk, meat, fruit, or vegetables. As a result, they all suffered from vitamin deficiencies. When Verika develops rheumatic fever, her father prohibits her from bathing, instead wrapping her in paper towels, causing Verika to sweat profusely. Barely recovered from rheumatic fever Verika is forced to spend her beach vacation in not only a bathing suit, but also a pair of leather boots, in case she stepped on a shard of glass. She wryly refers to it as her “grunge existentialist phase.”
Lost on me is Verika’s story, her unusual coming-of-age tale. It’s one half hilarious and one half melancholic, but wholly entertaining. It will make you feel better about your own family, but also slightly envious that they aren’t as remotely interesting as Verika’s.
Some details seem to be autobiographical—such as the fact that Verika and her brother both became writers—but how much of Raimo’s autofiction is based on her own life is unclear. Nonetheless, Lost on me is a wonderfully portrayed account of an exceptionally unique family.
Fact and fiction fuse in feminist Italian author Maria Rosa Cutrufelli’s first novel, Tina, Mafia Soldier, which is also the author’s first to be translated into English.
Originally published in 1994, Tina Cannizzaro’s story was inspired by that of Emanuela Azzarelli, a young woman who became the leader of a male teenage gang in the Sicilian town of Gela. Cutrufelli chronicles the events that shaped Tina’s life and set her on an irreversible path of crime and, ultimately, self-destruction against the backdrop of 1990s Sicily.
“When we’re young and you think of a world and a time when you didn’t exist, it doesn’t bother you, because history seems to have an implicit direction of travel that leads inevitably to the moment when you burst on the scene …The world without us after we’ve gone, on the other hand, is simply the world without us.”
These are the insightful and profound words of Guido Guerrieri, the protagonist in The Measure of Time. Much like the previous novels featuring the defence lawyer, Gianrico Carofiglio’s latest also serves up a thoroughly intricate and detailed court room drama, as well as insight into Guido’s personal life and his contemplation of his existence.
His rather melancholy outlook on time, life and death intensifies when Lorenza, a woman he was in love with twenty–seven years ago, walks into his office. Memories of their brief relationship come flooding back, but Lorenza is back in his life purely for business reasons. Her son Jacopo Cardace stands convicted of the first–degree murder of a local drug dealer, Cosimo Gaglione and since his trial lawyer, Costamagna, has died, she begs Guido to handle the appeal.
The deteriorating health and casual approach to law of Jacopo’s previous lawyer led to a weak defence. Practically no evidence was presented, no cross–examination and the only witness called was his mother who confirmed that he was with her at the time of the murder. Eventually Jacopo was convicted on the basis of a heated telephone with Cosimo Gaglione on the day of the murder and gun residue on the jacket he wore when arrested.
Partly coloured by his previous experience with Lorenza and Jacopo’s well-known reputation as a criminal, Guido is not entirely convinced of Jacopo’s innocence. His girlfriend and private investigator, Annapaola, even less so. However, Guido and Annapaola’s detective agency take on the case and start chasing down each and every lead and witness they can identify.
In a paper published in Italica in 2009 Nicoletta Diciolla refers to “… the emergence of a new category of writer that could be named ‘the law professional turned noir practioner’ ‘”. In her paper she discusses the increasing phenomenon of judges, lawyers and high ranking police officials who turn their hand to writing crime fiction and in particular, she Gianrico Carofiglio’s work. At that stage only three books in the Guido Guerrieri existed.
What is interesting is the parallel she draws between authors such as Gianrico Carofiglio and Michele Giuttari’s use of language in their professional and writing careers. In their careers they use words, in both spoken and written form, as an instrument to analyse, convince and convey information. This is apparent in the way Carofiglio structures his court room scenes and such detail would not have been possible without his judicial background and experience as an anti–Mafia prosecutor in Bari, a port on the coast of Puglia.
Aside from the convincing dialogue and legal jargon used the author’s background in the field adds a certain authority and weight to his writing. We have a credible insider’s overview of the workings, challenges and complexities of the Italian justice system. Unlike with a police officer or detective as protagonist where we might read about the bloody details and logistics of the murder, here we observe it from a distant, strictly legal perspective.
Despite its detailed legal component The Measure of Time is equal part a contemplation of life and these meditations are notable highlights. As mentioned earlier the passing of time and inevitable death is something which is on Guido’s mind and of course, also what the title refers to. His nostalgic memories of the time spent with Lorenza and the realisation that their relationship was doomed from the start are bitter–sweet.
“This woman belonged to a dimension of existence that was different from mine. She would become a famous writer, she would travel, she would live through all sorts of adventures. I had no part in that. I was just passing through.”
He fell in love with this beautiful, elusive and fickle woman who in the end merely discarded him without as much as an explanation or goodbye. We can’t help but sympathise with Guido, yet his reunion with Lorenza confirms that, in retrospect, it was for the best.
Guido might have a legal mind, but his thoughts frequently meander into the philosophical realm. This intellectual thinking is most likely exacerbated by his love for reading and books. The scene where he, suffering from insomnia, visits Osteria del Caffellatte, a bookshop which is open through the night will appeal to book lovers.
At one point he sentimentally recalls when we lived in a time of sounds that don’t exist anymore today.
“It was a time when the soundscape of our lives was starting to change irreversibly. A period still full of sounds that no longer exist today … It was analogue world still made up (not much for longer, though we didn’t know that then) of wheels, gears and switches.”
Acute observations of something as simple as the way sounds changed over decades are what make A Measure of Time more than just a legal crime fiction novel. If a well–structured courtroom drama is what you are looking for you won’t be disappointed, but you will certainly be pleasantly surprised by a more substantial read. Carofiglio also touches on vital issues in the Italian society such as morality; gender relations; organised crime and power dynamics.
Most of Carofiglio’s novels have, thankfully, been translated into multiple languages — many, including The Measure of Time, by Howard Curtis. They have earned him international acclaim and many are winners of numerous awards. Comparisons have been made to John Grisham, but I beg to differ, Gianrico Carofiglio, style is unequalled and well–worth exploring.
If you think The Measure of Time might tickle your fancy, here’s a short extract that might convince you to head over to your nearest book store.
The Measure of Time is published by Bitter Lemon Press and they kindly provided me with a review copy for this blog tour. Thank you to them and tour organiser, Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for allowing me to take part. We’re still only at the beginning of the tour, so look out for the reviews of the bloggers listed below.
About the author and translator
Gianrico Carofiglio now a full time novelist was a member of the Senate in Italy and an anti-Mafia prosecutor in Bari, a port on the coast of Puglia. He is a best-selling author of crime novels and literary fiction, translated in 27 languages. This is the sixth Guerrieri novel is in this best-selling series.
Howard Curtis is a well-known translator from the Italian and has translated other titles in this series.
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