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Posted December 20, 2002
THE PALAZZO. By Mary Chamberlin IDKPress, paper. Another time, another sensibility, another world. This novel was originally published in 1971 at a time when memories of the Second World War and its aftermath were still fresh. The Palazzo deserves to be re-published¿it¿s original, extraordinarily well-written, and it captures the beat and the pace of Italian life in the 1950s. Pippo La Rose observes, ¿The weary heavens had worn themselves down to a drizzle.¿ Luisa Salvini knows the sun is out: ¿She hadn¿t yet opened her eyes, but she knew it all the same. She could hear it.¿ American Carolyn Salvini observes, ¿Mrs. Aiken belonged to the sisterhood of women who have chosen to separate themselves from the world by desks.¿ Dino, the husband of Tullio¿s eldest teenage daughter, is making American suggestions¿Tullio confides to Beppe Bonaccorsi that Dino ¿wanted me to cover the murals with pine wood and buy special checkerboard tablecloths and put little brass lamps on each table.¿ They are incredulous at this scandalous invasion of the new world. The major scenes take place in the Palazzo Salvini which the Marchesa Luisa Salvini has converted from a palace into separate rental apartments. The roof leaks, a glass veranda is shattered, the wiring system hisses and puffs and then smokes out, the antiquated elevator `may not know how to stop, the furnace belches noxious fumes. The guidebook says that there is ¿no finer example of pure Renaissance style than the well-preserved Palazzo Salvini.¿ But this is Italy, circa 1957 or so, and the lives of the tenants, Italian and American, are brilliantly caught in this treasure trove of marvels. Wittily written, it provides us with the crowded humanity that has always been Rome¿that eternal city filled with volatile lives densely packed into an endless humor.
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