Books and other things: Montalbano’s Adventures in Wonderland: Death of Andrea Camilleri at 93 years old

The dream town of 'Vigata'

Like so many Camilleri fans, I was saddened to hear that this wonderful, talented author died on 17^th July 2019 from cardiac arrest. He was 93 years old and had written so many books, about 100, many translated into English, and there is one yet awaiting publication. I have loved them all, spiced as they are with his unique sense of humour amidst the most horrifying violence. Truly, humour is what saves us human beings from total madness, defuses difficult situations and Camilleri knew how to gently mock even the dreaded Mafiosa. He helped us to change our views of Sicily as a gangster driven island filled with cowed people. We see it now as place of strange barren beauty, delightful, honey-coloured buildings, ruined ancient temples and baroque architecture, interesting characters and good-hearted people, plus great and healthy food dishes (mainly fish). He introduced Sicilian phrases and dialect into his stories and many Sicilian actors or ordinary people of the town were used in the TV series that followed on, adding authenticity and charm. And the Sicilians have much to thank him for helping their own renewed interest in their island history plus an upsurge in tourism to help the economy. Apparently, some of his books are now used in Sicilian schools.

Andrea Camilleri (Getty Images)

Camilleri was about 67 and had retired from a respected career as a TV director and author when his first book on Montalbano was published by Sellerio. It’s called The Shape of the Water. It immediately seized the Italian imagination and more followed on, often with intriguing titles such as The Voice of the Violin, The Scent of the Night, The Paper Moon and many others, all in 180 page format, ten pages per chapter. Many stories commence with a strange dream from which Montalbano awakes in a panic, dreams which are sometimes precognitive, coming true in an alarming manner. It seems that Camilleri loved to hear the stories from Alice in Wonderland as a child. The strange dipping into the depths of the unconscious mind, the alternative world of our dreams, the sense of things not being as they seem to the rational mind must have arisen from this early fascination of his and a sense of the supernatural enters the stories in subtle ways, flashes of cognition, the Inspector’s solitary walks filled with pauses pregnant with thoughtfulness and feeling. Montalbano comes over as a man of great depths, modest, honourable and basically kind. He reflect Camilleri’s own personality for the author was very left wing, advocating the rights of all people and seeing them as human beings, not labelling them as immigrants, criminals or deranged, but showing the motives that drove them, the poverty, fear, greed and all the human foibles and human greatness.

What is it about the Inspector Montalbano series produced by RAI TV which has captivated people in so many countries from Italy to Australia? It’s that intriguing, indefinable atmosphere, produced firstly by Franco Piersanti’s haunting title music that accompanies a glorious swirling aerial view of the imaginary town of Vigata. The overhead shot moves over a hilltop town and then pans down to the seascape where a lonely swimmer carves his way to a totally empty shore, clambers out, seizes a towel on the beach and towelling himself vigorously, walks up stone steps to his beautiful apartment with balconies overlooking the beach and the sea.

The police HQ at 'Vigata'

Here Montalbano thoughtfully ponders his mysterious, complex cases over a strong cup of coffee or a solitary, silent meal on the balcony (cooked by his amazing housekeeper, Adelina) or else in a corner of Enzio’s restaurant. Here’s a detective who loves his food and likes to concentrate on it and not chatter while he eats (how I approve of that!) , keeps fit, is considerate of others, gentlemanly towards women, but still exhibits a fine Sicilian temper with fools. He cares about people, has strong friendships and maintains a strangely distant, yet loyal love-affair with Livia, a lady who lives on mainland Italy.

In order to evoke the surrealism in Camilleri’s stories, the streets are always strangely empty of people and traffic and a brooding silence seems to pervade the town. There is a Pirandello feel about all this and Camilleri has sometimes been compared to that other great writer (whose most famous work is Six Characters in Search of an Author). Apparently the two writers were distantly related. This slightly unreal, almost dreamlike atmosphere in the books has been captured by the direction of Alberto Sironi and by the superb acting of the star, Luca Zingaretti, who had to adjust his Roman Italian to a Sicilian accent in order to play the part.

One of the most delightful holidays of recent years was when we visited Sicily on a Montalbano tour. We were conducted around all the locations which made up the imaginary town of Vigata, actually Scicli, with other locations in Modica, Punto Secca and Donnafugata Castle, all in the province of Ragusa in South Eastern Sicily.

We sat outside the famous apartment on the beach and swam in ‘Montalbano’s sea’. It was a great experience to be with other fans, all thrilled with the fact of ‘being there’. Watching the series again afterwards made it so much more fun when I could say gleefully, ‘Look, we were there!'

Punta Secca, the apartment

Just to add to the surreal atmosphere surrounding Camilleri’s work, he died on the night of a partial lunar eclipse that glowed a deep dark red for some minutes. A Paper Moon.