Venero Armanno

Venero Armanno is a great storyteller. My heart sank when I saw the cover of his latest novel because I detest boxing but I need not have worried. Burning Down is a thoroughly engaging story of redemption and reconciliation, and I liked it very much.
The novel is set in Brisbane in 1975, i.e. in the days before Brisvegas and gentrification, and also before the Fitzgerald Inquiry. While the mild summary from Wikipedia can’t really convey the way that event reverberated around Australia…

The Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct (the Fitzgerald Inquiry) (1987–1989) into Queensland Police corruption was a judicial inquiry presided over by Tony Fitzgerald QC. The inquiry resulted in the deposition of a premier, two by-elections, the jailing of three former ministers and a police commissioner who was jailed and lost his knighthood. It also led indirectly to the end of the National Party of Australia’s 32-year run as the governing political party in Queensland.

… it does hint at the extent to which corruption was endemic in all sorts of enterprises. Armanno’s novel reminded me of those B&W American gangster movies where all-powerful men ran their operations from derelict warehouses without interference from the police, and where victims going to the police for help or rescue were hopelessly naïve. In the world of Burning Down, only the younger generation consider it, and are soon disabused of their naïveté.
The central character is Charlie Smoke, a.k.a. Carmelo Fumo, a bricklayer with a mediocre boxing career long behind him. His former wife Tracy has died, and he is estranged from his 19-year-old daughter Sistina (Sissy) but he fills his days by taking pride in his work and running a training gym for young aspiring boxers in his rather shabby neighbourhood. One of the elements of this novel that I really like is the way Armanno explores ideas about boys learning masculinity, and we see this when Charlie’s new bricklaying job introduces Ricky, a troubled boy not coping well with warring parents. Charlie is captivated by Ricky’s mother Holly, with her violet eyes and blonde hair and trim body, but he is also intrigued by Ricky. Despite the boy’s flab and the truculence, Charlie sees potential in Ricky, and with his easy way of making conversation, he soon engages Ricky’s interest and yes, he eventually ends up in the gym with the other kids.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/02/25/burning-down-by-venero-armanno-bookreview/… (altro)

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A hasty read of this book's cover blurb led me to expect a kind of fictionalised misery memoir cum migration tale, a book where a second or third generation Australian explores his European heritage, and there are elements of that kind of book: in the most powerful and memorable part of the book the main character, Cesare Montenero, is sold as a child into virtual slavery to work in Sicily's sulphur mines in the early 20th century. But Cesare's story is told in the literary equivalent of found footage, and the sulphur mines experience accounts for only 40 of the 200 or so pages of the found manuscript. A 30-page prologue has already set some creepy, horror-genre expectations, so that from the beginning one's antennae are out for hints of the darker, weirder underlying story. It's hard to say much more without giving stuff away, but there are plenty of pleasing twists and turns. I'm glad I didn't read any reviews beforehand, as one of the book's pleasures is in the way appearances turn out to be deceptive, the ground shifts constantly under your feet, you can't really be sure what kind of book it is you're reading.

I enjoyed it, but can't say I found it completely satisfactory. Too often I became aware of the plot mechanics, that someone was making it all up. A gauge of my lack of engagement is that I kept wanting to have a conversation with the copy editor about the occasional US spelling and malapropism.… (altro)