It's my turn on the BlogTour The Measure of Time by Gianrico Carofiglio.
About the Author and the Translator
Gianrico Carofiglio now a full time novelist was a member of the Senate in Italy and an anti-Mafia prosecutor in Bari, a port on the coast of Puglia. He is a best-selling author of crime novels and literary fiction, translated in 27 languages. This is the sixth Guerrieri novel is in this best-selling series.
Howard Curtis is a well-known translator from the Italian and has translated other titles in this series.
Follow Gianrico Carofiglio @GianricoCarof and translator @HowardCurtis49 on Twitter, on Goodreads, Buy The Measure of Time
The latest in the highly successful Guido Guerrieri series, shortlisted for the 2020 STREGA prize, Italy’s most prestigious literary award. It is a tense courtroom drama set in Southern Italy, but also a tale about passion and the passage of time. Guerrieri had fallen in love decades earlier with Lorenza, a beautiful older woman who was in his eyes sophisticated and intellectual. She made wonderful love and opened his mind to high literature, but ultimately treated him as a plaything and discarded him.
One spring afternoon Lorenza shows up in Guerrieri’s office. Her son Jacopo, a small-time delinquent, stands convicted of the first-degree murder of a local drug dealer. Her trial lawyer has died, so for the appeal, she turns to Guerrieri. He is not convinced of the innocence of Lorenza’s son, nor does he have fond memories of how their relationship ended two decades earlier. Nevertheless, he accepts the case; perhaps to pay a melancholy homage to the ghosts of his youth.
Review
The Guido Guerrieri series is an interesting combination of studiously calm and fiercely passionate, this straddling of both sides of his character is what makes the series. The inner dialogue, the questioning of self, the constant narrative with himself about past, present and future - it's what makes Guido Guerrieri a man and character to remember.
Lorenza has come to Guido to request his help in getting her son some decent legal representation. She wants him to come to her rescue for old times sake to help save her troublemaker of a son.
His memories of their time together and Lorenza as a younger person are based on feelings of nostalgia at first, but the nostalgia is interrupted by flashbacks of the controversial anti-establishment rebel. How her experience influenced him as a younger man and perhaps shaped him in a way.
These interruptions to his inner flow and dialogue put a certain perspective on the whole scenario. It's interesting how Guido is influenced by these spur of the moment gut reactions. Exactly the opposite of his professional exterior.
It's an excellent legal thriller - a courtroom drama. A meticulously plotted back and forth tennis game of evidence, proof and whatever lurks in the middle of the two. Carofiglio has a very distinctive writing voice, very much like a tiger padding slowly towards its prey and ultimately a crescendo of the plot.
Buy The Measure of Time at Amazon UK or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press pub date 18th March 2021. Buy at Amazon com.
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