Massimo Carlotto
And another winter will come
Rizzoli, 230 pages, 16.50 euros
The plot of Italian thrillers or noirs is habitual, dictated by the fascination of the writer and who will read not so much for death as for crime, because one never identifies with the victims and rarely – even if it is denied – with those who will do justice but above all with those who commit crime: a miserable curiosity grown on frustrations. In this pond, Carlotto’s novels are distinguished from the superficiality of most by his cold ability to do sociology, because they make us enter the folds of a world and see how it works closely. A much harsher context and mechanisms than how, for example, news reporters tell us about them.
Also in this case we are taken from the gallery of characters, immediately defined in relation to their class belonging: even when the classes seem to be confused, the rich are distinguished from the poor and from their courts, from their aspiring pupils and imitators. With a state (its representatives) that is mostly complicit or lazy. The motivation of the crime is always the interest but also, it can be added, envy; and it is still a question of consumption. The context in which Carlotto digs is the Veneto with its economic miracles, and what is achieved and follows from them: cold envies that lead to cold wickedness. Carlotto can be boring but not disappointing, because he is one of the few true Italian sociologists.
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