The Brewer of Preston

October 6, 2014
Fans of Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano series (Angelica’s Smile, etc.) will relish this amusing, playful tale set in Vigàta, Sicily, in 1874. The citizens of Vigàta are smarting under the rule of the prefect of Montelusa, Eugenio Bortuzzi, who has decided that the town’s impressive new theater will be inaugurated by a performance of The Brewer of Preston. The opera was written by a mediocre composer, Luigi Ricci, who once presented a rehashing of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro as his own work. Grumbles from the Vigàta Civic Club reach the ear of Bortuzzi via the tongue of Emanuele “Uncle Memè” Ferraguto, a self-serving toady. Fire strikes the theater mere hours after its inauspicious opening. A series of absurd incidents follow in almost random fashion, some comic, some tragic. Camilleri cleverly ends the novel with chapter one, which provides the perfect summation that proves history is written (or rewritten) by the survivors. Agent: Donatella Barbieri, Agenzia Letteraria Internazionale (Italy).

November 1, 2014
In 19th-century Sicily, a cornucopia of craziness surrounds the premiere of an opera buffo in a small music-loving town. The story begins on a dark and rainy night in Vigata with Gerd Hoffer, a little boy who desperately needs to go to the bathroom but is afraid to use the privy and daren't wake anyone else in the house. The scene shifts to a heated meeting of the Progress Social Club of Vigata, where the proposed staging of an obscure opera, The Brewer of Preston, greatly upsets the traditionalists in the group, which includes the snide Canin Bonmartino and the esteemed Dr. Gammacurta. After the meeting, plots and subplots promptly begin to brew. Not far away, randy widow Concetta Lo Russo breathlessly prepares for a late-night rendezvous. (Colorful names abound: Pippino Mazzaglia, Dom Meme Ferraguto, Coco Impiduglia, Turiddru Macca, etc.) And so it goes, the story rolling forward as the buffo battle intensifies and backward to incorporate juicy anecdotes from the town's past, like the comically grotesque overkill of the teenage son of a "legitimate Sicilian businessman" that began a long-standing vendetta. Citizens on both sides of the dispute scour the small town to enlist supporters. When someone resorts to arson, it's a comic misadventure. Puckishly titled chapters add zest to the mix, while several pages of endnotes translate the sprinkling of Italian phrases and obscure artistic references. Fans of Camilleri's long-running Inspector Montalbano series (Angelica's Smile, 2014, etc.) will be familiar with his brand of lusty lunacy, carried here to a degree that rivals Boccaccio.

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November 1, 2014

In his second hilarious historical outing (after Hunting Season), the author of the "Commissario Montalbano" police procedurals returns to the fictional 19th-century Sicilian town of Vigata, where the forced performance of a second-rate opera titled The Brewer of Preston has the good townspeople subverting all law and order for a brief while. Camilleri is a great plotter, and his books are filled with action (mayhem, usually), but the dominant note in all his fiction is humor. Sometimes the amusing prose is sly and witty, but most usually it's demotic, outright bawdy. Translator Sardarellli--the translator from heaven, so good is he--points out in his notes that Camilleri starts every chapter with a direct quote or playful paraphrase of the opening line taken from other authors' books, including the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Herman Melville to Ray Bradbury and Peanuts creator Charles Schulz. The author's literacy sits lightly throughout but is another small cunning pleasure in a book full of delightful surprises. VERDICT Camilleri has many fans; this book should have broad appeal and only add to his reader base.--David Keymer, Modesto, CA

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