The day of the owl

Seems fitting that I come across a mafia murder mystery just as I'm starting to study Italian.

Gonna be honest and admit that I felt like a lot of this book went over my head. It very much felt like a product of its time (1960's Sicily), and there was probably a lot of contemporary historical references and nuances that I just plain missed, but I think I got the gist of it. Still, this was a hard book to follow because several characters weren't fully named, or at least they were never referenced by name, but instead by job title ('the Captain', 'the Sergeant', etc.). Also, towns where events were happening weren't named, they were just listed by their first letter (most of this book happened between C. and S.).

But at heart it was a police procedural with a local flavor and an ending I didn't expect. Lots of witness interviews, concerns over who might be a closet socialist or a closet fascist in this newborn republic, lots of backroom conversations between unnamed people and a lot of frustration on the protagonist's part. I'm sure I would've gotten more out of it if I were more familiar with Italian history in the twentieth century, but at the end of the day it was a 120-page book I got for $4 at Goodwill, so I'm not mad about my investment into it.

Also, heads up that this is one of those books that has an introduction that fully contains spoilers of the book itself (I don't know why this is a thing).

A compelling and short novel that shines brighter when it is less about the crime central to the plot and more about the philosophical attitudes of the mafia toward civilization, its intent.

'The people,' said the old man, sneering, 'the people were cuckolds then and they still are. The only difference is that fascism hung only one flag on the people's horns and democracy lets everyone hang one on his own horns and choose his own colour. We're back to the old argument. Not only men, but entire nations are born cuckolds, cuckolds from olden times, generation after generation...'

'I don't consider myself a cuckold,' said the young man.

'Nor do I. But we, my dear boy, walk on the horns of others; like dancers...' and the old man got up and did a few tripping dance steps, mimicking the balance and rhythm of one hopping from the tip of one horn to another.

That paragraph is interesting but what makes Sciascia an author to reckon with is the passage that comes a few paragraphs later:

'He becomes a real philosopher at times,' thought the young man, mistaking philosophy for a sort of play of mirrors in which a long memory and a brief future reflect twilit thoughts and vague distorted images of reality.

It is a position of self-definition and one that could only come from a aging patriarchal seat.

I would have preferred more showing and less telling but the novel was short enough that it never bogged down.