Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna by Mario Giordano

Translator: John Brownjohn

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Publication date: 2019

Summary:

In Sicily, vivacious widow Auntie Poldi is a local celebrity after solving her handyman’s murder. Yet she still lives “on the knife edge between joie de vivre and melancholy,” made worse by going through criminological cold turkey. (Her words.) Her worried family dispatches her writer nephew (who’s “as good as unemployed”) to keep an eye on her. Hey, maybe he’ll finally finish chapter two of his family saga novel.

But as Poldi explains to the unnamed nephew-narrator, now that she’s gotten a taste of the “detective life,” the only thing that snaps her out of this precarious situation is more detecting. This incites the wrath of her new boyfriend, Chief Inspector Vito Montana. When the water supply to her street is cut, Poldi detects that the Mafia is obviously pressuring her. And obviously, they are behind her neighbor’s dog’s poisoning and two murders. All she has to do is prove it. Or possibly it’s the handsome vineyard owner who’s behind it. Or maybe his twin brother? Anyway, Poldi will prove her point. Once she begins her brilliant investigation, no one can stop her.

My thoughts:

Get your passport ready, because you’ll want to book a flight to Sicily after reading this book. Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna is easily one of the funniest books I’ve read recently. Cheers to Mario Giordano for making me laugh, and cheers also to John Brownjohn for a warm and humorous translation. Reading this book was fun. Here’s a few reasons why:

Auntie Poldi

She’s a name-dropper (she claims to have been buddies with Cher, among other celebrities) and a busy-body who meddles in her nephew’s attempts to write “proper literature.” She relates the tale of her investigation to her nephew in fits and starts, always maintaining her proper role as heroine, and brushes aside any of his irrelevant doubts as to its veracity. After she solves her handyman’s murder (in the first book of the series), she becomes a local celebrity, complete with selfie requests. She makes no apologies for liking sex or wine.

She’s full of life, even when she dreams/hallucinates/sees Death. (In case you’re wondering, he’s wearing a hoodie, looks ill, smell sweaty. He administers his job with the lethargy of an overworked low-level government bureaucrat. He always carries a clipboard.)

The Sicilian setting

When Auntie Poldi’s water goes out for three weeks, she blames the Mafia. This sounds far-fetched for those unfamiliar with Sicily. But as Giordano explains, “Whoever controls the water supply rules Sicily” (pg. 9). Cutting off the water supply to a street or region is an effective way of sending a warning to transgressors.

Giordano explains these types of juicy details in a droll and entertaining way. I learned about vineyards and forgotten lakes, friendly volcanoes and fish and festivities. Sure, I could’ve read the Wikipedia entry on Sicily and learned certain facts. But what’s Wikipedia compared with chasing killers with the half-intoxicated, never law-abiding, wholly-opinionated Auntie Poldi? Sicily bursts alive on the page.

The writer nephew’s ongoing writer-crisis

Anyone who’s written fiction will enjoy the running jokes about the writing life. As Auntie Poldi regales her nephew with her tale, she dispenses writerly “wisdom.” For example, Vito Montano shows Poldi a photo of the murder victim before her death.

Poldi turned the photo this way and that (…) as if this would enable her to see through Elisa’s mask and gain some idea of her backstory wound.

“Because mark my words,” she told me once, “a detective must always work out what the murder victim is trying to tell them. (…) The backstory, know what I mean? You always have to know that” (pages 27-8).

Later, she tells him,

(she) was already pursuing another hypothesis. She would not, however, reveal it to me that evening.

“For purely dramatic reasons, understand? Get this straight: you have to toy with your audience. They don’t want you to give away all your secrets at once. They want to be wooed and enchanted. It’s like a ballet. It’s what you might call literary precision engineering” (page. 84).

Later, she gives him a good scolding.

“It’s time you made up your mind what you’re writing: a family saga, a fantasy, a thriller, a police procedural or what? Combining them all into one doesn’t work. This Victus Tanner of yours–get rid of him, he’s unbelievable. I won’t let you put my cases through the mincer and blend them with the sausage meat of your pubescent fantasies. It’s all or nothing, understand?”

“But what about artistic license?”

“There’s got to be some art to make free with in the first place.” (page 328)

Incidentally, Auntie Poldi later brags about him to her neighbor.

“He’s a proper novelist. He’s writing an impressive family saga covering three generations. It’s going to be really juicy (…) It’s his big throw of the dice, his ticket to international bestsellerdom.” (page 334)

Ah, if only all would-be novelists had an Auntie Poldi as a beta reader, the publishing world might be a . . . Better place? Worse? Who knows? But her advice and critiques certainly hit their marks.

My conclusion

This was an enchanting, warm story. I was reminded a bit of Mme. Ramotswe from Alexander McCall-Smith’s No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series. Also, if you enjoy warm cozies with slightly outrageous aspects, check out Aunt Dimity and the King’s Ransom by Nancy Atherton.

I heartily recommend this book.

(This review also appears on Goodreads and Bookbub.)

Bonus tip for writers

Be big. Be outrageous. Be believable.

Giordano has created Poldi as a larger-than-life, overwhelming character. In some books, she would be too much and the readers would raise eyebrows in skepticism. But he gets away with it because the rest of the book is so outrageous, too. Death as a character, for example, is an outlandish idea. (It’s a stroke of genius, in my opinion, to make him such a lackluster, drooping employee of a bloated government bureaucracy. Ironic, and it fits with the rest of the story.)

But there’s a second reason: both the nephew/narrator and Poldi are unreliable characters. The nephew’s never certain whether Poldi’s telling the entire truth, especially as she’s obviously prone to exaggerating her importance and relationships with celebrities. (See her story about Cher.) But we’re also never quite certain whether this nephew is reliable, too. Is he putting her stories through a mincer and mixing it with “the sausage meat of his “pubescent fantasies”? Possibly.

The reason we can believe the story, as outrageous as it is, is partially because of the unreliable narrators. We know these are characters who exaggerate. We know they aren’t always telling us everything. And we accept their tales just like we accept the wacky stories our crazy old relatives regaled us with every family reunion. (Or am I the only one?)

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