The Glassblower of Murano by Marina Fiorato

O.K. then, The Glassblower of Murano was a fun read; and although it took 348 pages to do it, the author did bring tears to my eyes with the fantastic, last-50-page wrap-up.  But fantasy is the operative word here.  Marina Fiorato doesn’t just tell two similar stories linked across a dozen generations.  That is not an uncommon literary device for historical novels.  She conveniently skips over the intervening years and paints the patriarch saint of the glassblowers almost in intimate father/daughter discussions with our present day heroine.  The names don’t change; the faces don’t change; their passions and life stories don’t change.

The historical, informational aspect of this book was well done, as one expects from an Oxford educated English major.  I found the interpersonal efforts at friendship, romance, travel, and women’s issues to be simplistic and tawdry.  Fiorato’s lack of depth in writing about these personal areas is to some extent balanced by her excellent command of the English language.  The author has a penchant for liberally using superlative adjectives: the best table with a peerless view.  She brings up her Oxbridge bias when describing her first, sterile husband, Stephen as a Cambridge man with old world manners.

It was all so predictable: they, her old, can’t get pregnant, but her new, pops a bun in the oven within a few weeks [Gosh, I guess it wasn’t me!]; she falls in love with a tall, dark, handsome Italian [Duh, who’d guessed?]; and amazingly too much, she winds up with a baby male heir, a great beaux, the envy of her workmates, a good mentor friend, and the keys to Murano, where the world will honor her as the greatest glassblower and a beautiful woman to boot [who’d of ever thunk it?].

The shallowness of the plotline is further evidenced by the total lack of anyone “bad”.  The only two possibilities are Vittoria and Roberto: Vittoria is excused because she is merely a journalist, and after all, what can one expect; Roberto is off the hook, well it’s not clear why, he’s just trapped in a complex Greek tragedy.  The only true bad guys are the shades [yes, she’s channeling Greek tragedy], all dark, ominous and usually hooded.  Thus, Marina has re-crafted a Shakespearian drama {her major}, which in turn has its roots in Greek tragedy.

Writers are a fickle bunch these days.  Of course there’s a rationale, for all this lack of depth and the simplistic plotlines -- movies.!.!  Let’s review the features of this movie:

·                 Beautiful blond, upper middle class, artistic English heroine

·                 Blown marriage to a prissy Cambridge boring doctor: new guy has abs

·                 Summer vacation in Italy diddling with her glass blowing hobby {& sex}

·                 Gorgeous scenes of eateries, museums, canals, men, money, women, sex

·                 Striving, righteous artist fights male chauvinism to win acceptance

·                 The ever popular Mae Bush {Laurel & Hardy sidekick}

      search for an historical ikon [the note]

 

This is an Academy Award Winning Film.! [Sorry Marina, they never made it]

The Last Resort by Pat Nolan

I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun reading a book.  That means I read “The Last Resort” slowly, savouring each chapter; allowing the previous chapter’s outrageous plot twist to settle in. 

The author, Pat Nolan, was completely successful at suspending my disbelief, but keeping things right at that edge.  The characters are developed, revelation by revelation, like a simmering paella on a slow burner. 

It’s sort of a classic detective/murder mystery in the Chandleresque style.  But we, the readers are faced with a gorgeous, blond supermodel instead of a grizzly shamus.  The incongruity is right there, up front for the reader to have to come to grips with, every chapter.  The author pushes, but it’s so intriguing, that we are successfully bonded to this bitchy, spoiled Lee Malone.

Another aspect of the Lee Malone “Adventure” is that it takes place in California’s remote Western Russian River area.  Again, the author has tactfully avoided making this a “local’s” niche-market only book.  The remoteness is an integral part of the plotline, but it could be anywhere in the world.  Still, for true locals, there are plenty of scenes and people to be recognized.

I mentioned the outrageous plot twists in the opening lines of this commentary.  These go on right up to the end.  It’s hard to figure who’s good and who’s bad.  Of course, the bigest twist on the classics is with the detective being an over-thirty supermodel who frequently finds herself scantily clad.  But the reason this book is so much fun is that Nolan introduces something wildly weird with each chapter: drugs, arson, motorcycles, kidnapping, murder, or porn.  Strangely, this all works – maybe I have been living in this area too long; or maybe Pat Nolan has; or maybe he’s just a good author who can spin a great yarn.

Whether tongue-in-cheek or not; and whether the author simply wants to cram as much as possible into this first Lee Malone Adventure, or not: this book, “The Last Resort”, makes a delicious summer read, of something stimulating to go with a northern coast salmon steak and a Russian River Pinot.