Supernotes by Agent Kasper and Luigi Carletti

Published in Italy in 2014; published in translation by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday on January 12, 2016

Since Supernotes is based on a true story, it doesn’t have all the twists and turns and action and suspense that a traditional spy novel delivers. Real life just isn’t as exciting as fiction. On the other hand, if the story is more-or-less true, an intriguing series of events can be a good substitute for an action-packed plot. Unfortunately, Supernotes delivers too little intrigue while telling a story that isn’t entirely convincing.

Kasper is an Italian, although his father was born in Memphis and much of his family lives in St. Louis. He is a former member of Italy’s national police who became an airline pilot and did some shady consulting work for the national police. The work involved playing an undercover role in large drug deals and money laundering operations. According to the Italian government, he has “a right-wing past and dangerous friends.” In Cambodia, he owned a bar with a former CIA agent and engaged in vaguely-described contract espionage.

We learn of Kasper’s history in flashbacks. The story begins with a Cambodian official warning Kasper and the former CIA agent to leave Phnom Penh. Kasper makes it as far as the Thai border, where he is arrested.

The story focuses on Kasper’s detention. Americans who identify themselves as Homeland Security and FBI agents play a dark role. Kasper’s mother and girlfriend have enlisted the help of Italian lawyer named Barbara Belli, who tries to win Kasper’s release. A variety of other people also drop in on the imprisoned Kasper, who is apparently being kept alive only because his mother pays bribes on his behalf.

One problem with writing a novel from a single character’s perspective, at least when the book is based on that character’s real world experience, is the question of credibility. The reader must believe that Kasper is telling the truth and, if he is, that his perception of reality is accurate. Kasper isn’t the kind of person I would trust under the best of circumstances, and given the temptation to use this book to repair his reputation, I have little reason to believe that it is entirely honest.

Even if Kasper is telling his story in good faith, I suspect that other players would have quite a different perspective on the events that Kasper describes. Supernotes would probably be a fascinating work of nonfiction if written by an objective outsider who interviewed, not just Kasper, but all the relevant people in his life. As it stands, we have only Kasper’s word that he was “disavowed” while acting as an undercover agent for the Italian police, that Americans offered to secure his release from prison for nefarious reasons, and that he was acting in anyone’s interest other than his own when he tried to get his hands on more than a hundred million dollars in supernotes.

The story bobs and weaves around the topic of supernotes -- the book’s title and presumably its intended theme -- but only as it nears its end do supernotes play any significant role in the plot. Maybe China and North Korea really are flooding Asia with undetectable counterfeit American currency. Maybe Kasper’s theory about who is really backing the counterfeit money machine (a doubtful conspiracy theory that has been around for several years) is correct. But Kasper’s assertion that he was imprisoned because he “knew too much” about supernotes strikes me as being just a little too convenient.

This is a work of fiction so the story doesn’t need to be true, but it does need to be believable. Some of the book -- the brutality in Prey Sar prison, political corruption in Cambodia, the money extorted from Kasper’s family -- is easy to believe. It is Kasper, casting himself in a heroic role, I doubted. Fictional characters are credible when they show their warts, but the character of Kasper is ambiguous. We are told that Kasper was “investigated” for certain crimes, but did he commit them? We are told that as a young man, he sympathized with fascism, but did he sympathize with right wing terrorists? Kasper isn’t telling. Kasper blames his problems on a host of people other than himself, but are they really to blame? Kasper rejects his portrayal as a radical “loose cannon” by the press, but maybe the press got it right and Kasper is using the book to rewrite his legacy. Who knows?

Some parts of the novel -- primarily flashbacks that take place outside of the prison setting -- are quite good. A scene in Zurich evokes the kind of tension that a spy novel fan expects. Most of the story, however, is less than riveting. The final chapters make an obvious but unsuccessful attempt to create suspense. Again, I might excuse those failings that if the story had the feel of reality, but Supernotes didn’t persuade me to view Kasper as either a hero or a victim, despite his intense desire to play both roles.

NOT RECOMMENDED

For They Have Sown the Wind by Alessandro Perissinotto

First published in Italy in 2011; published in translation by Piemme on September 16, 2014

Fools always need an enemy to feel powerful. That is why they are always defining and deriding enemies, urging their exclusion from society. Such is the lesson of For They Have Sown the Wind, a novel that takes an unfortunate amount of time to make a meaningful point.

Di Stefano does not know whether his client, Giacomo Musso, is innocent or guilty of the crime for which he has been jailed. He gives Musso some photographs to jog his memory and asks Musso to write down what happened. Instead of getting to the point, Musso puts the pictures in chronological order and writes about each one. The result is a detailed historical account of Musso's relationship with his wife.

Musso, trained as a teacher but employed as a curator of children's exhibits in a science museum, met Shirin while he was working as a part-time bartender in Paris. Shirin was born in France to wealthy Iranian parents. Musso describes their life together, first in France and then in Italy. Musso's love of Shirin forces him to confront his view of modern Iran as a land of "nuclear power plants, weapons, and bloodthirsty scientists with long beards" rather than a country of ski lifts, cell phones, and television game shows.

Racial and religious hatred is the prevalent theme in Musso's account of his experience with Shirin in Italy and France. Although the novel's first half is slow-moving and dry, the story gains interest when Musso explains how, while teaching at a Catholic school in Italy, his marriage to Shirin became a serious career impediment. Religious persecution becomes even more apparent when the town's mayor seeks the exclusion of Shirin from the town's festival on the ground that a Muslim should not wear the town's traditional costumes or pollute its songs. Shirin's atheism makes her no less Islamic in the town's eyes.

In a pivotol scene, Shirin stands up for a Tunisian woman enjoying a beach who refuses to expose the amount of skin demanded by a local ordinance. Alessandro Perissinotto writes with extraordinary insight into the conflict between western feminists who oppose religious traditions that require women to hide their bodies and Muslim women who are comfortable with their cultural traditions and do not view them as instruments of oppression. The novel also engages in an interesting debate about the value of tradition versus the harms that traditions perpetuate.

As much as I found parts of the novel to be compelling, I was put off by an underlying story that struck me as forced and melodramatic. Shirin's evolving attitude toward her relationship with Musso (as opposed to her evolving sense of self) lacks the development needed to make it convincing. Worse than that, when the novel isn't brilliant, it drags. The crime around which the plot is organized is all but lost for most of the story. When it is finally revealed in the closing pages, I thought it was preposterous. The crime exists only to shock the reader in the novel's closing pages, but the motivation for the crime is unconvincing at best. I disliked about half of this novel but absolutely loved the parts that engaged me. My decision to recommend the novel with reservations is a compromise verdict.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Human Body by Paolo Giordano

Published in Italy in 2012; published in translation by Pamela Dorman Books on October 2, 2014. As you can see in the comment section of this post, the book was translated by Anne Milano Appel.

The Human Body follows several Italian soldiers, beginning on the day before they leave on a mission to Afghanistan and ending after they return home. The Italians are charged with maintaining a "security bubble" after American soldiers have cleansed the area of people they identify as insurgents. "Security" includes such tasks as protecting the military's washing machines from sandstorms. We know from the prolog that Lt. Alessandro Egitto (the only doctor at the Italians' Forward Operating Base) will receive a four month suspension for an "incident" that occurs during the mission. We do not learn the nature of the accusation, however, until the final chapter.

The reader spends most of the novel's first half becoming acquainted with the characters, including Egitto, who is dealing (not particularly well) with a dying father and an indifferent sister back home. Only a couple of the Italians in uniform are female. One of those is an intelligence officer who has a history with Egitto. Again, we do not understand her full importance to the story until the novel is nearly finished.

War provides the background, leading to a pivotal moment of lethal violence in an eventful second half, but most of the drama in the first half comes from internal battles. A male stripper/prostitute who left behind an unplanned pregnancy wrestles with the contents of an email that will say yes or no to an abortion. A virgin wants to stay alive so his mother (the only woman in his life) will not feel the pain of his loss. A soldier worries that his internet chatmate might be a guy pretending to be a female. Some characters worry about their inhumane treatment of innocent Afghan families while others loath every Afghan as if they were all Taliban.

In the end, the novel is about the impact of the war on the soldiers. The men cope (or fail to cope) with fear, with guilt, with anger, with loneliness, with worry that they will be just as lonely when they make it home. Egitto describes himself as turning into "something abstract," something that is no longer a human being. Another soldier, facing death, regrets all the squabbles he had with a woman when (he realizes) he should simply have been satisfied to receive her love and understanding. Another is haunted by a small act of selfishness that leads to a tragic consequence. A colonel reflects upon his inability to remember the faces of the men who die under his command. One of the men, after returning home, is assured that he will soon become "the man he was before," but he knows that is neither possible nor desirable.

War changes people but, as key characters realize, so does the act of living. We cannot control all the events that change us, the novel suggests, but how we respond to those events is what matters. Paolo Giordano's keen illustration of that lesson earns The Human Body my strong recommendation.

RECOMMENDED

The First True Lie by Marina Mander

Published in Italy in 2011; published by Crown/Hogarth on January 21, 2014

Luca and his mother have lived an isolated life. It was a fun life when Luca's mother was happy but she was more often depressed and withdrawn, unable to overcome a loneliness for which her anti-social nature was partly responsible. Luca is a kid with issues, including his well-founded fear that his mother, who won't wake up, has died and made him an orphan. His unknown father is long-gone and his mother's attempts to find a replacement have only resulted in a string of noisy bedroom encounters with men who are unworthy contenders for the role. With nowhere to turn, Luca is on his own -- except for a cat named Blue and his sexually active Star Wars action figures. While he must decide what to do about his motionless mother, he is certain that it is best not to tell anyone because he has heard stories about orphanages and he doesn't want to end up living in one, particularly if he can't bring Blue.

Luca is foul-mouthed in a funny, almost silly sort of way. Telling his story in the first person and claiming to be in love with words (particularly those that will hasten his journey to adulthood), he is far more eloquent than a child would ordinarily be. I regard that as a plus. Luca is a chronicler of obscure facts (like the rate of hair growth). He is also an astute observer of adult life. He doesn't understand much of it, but then, who does?

Despite its gruesome subject matter, there is a sweetness and innocence to this story of childhood tragedy that makes it easy to digest. Marina Mander also incorporates a fair amount of humor, mined from Luca's active imagination and pithy observations of adult life. This is ultimately a coming of age (prematurely) story as Luca learns to overcome fear. The novel's chief fault is its brevity. I suppose it's best for a story about a rotting maternal corpse in the bedroom not to go on too long, but this one would have benefited from a few more pages, or even a few more paragraphs. The story lacks a resolution. Sometimes an open-ended ending is appropriate but I found the abrupt conclusion (really more of a discontinuation) to be frustrating. Still, I like Mander's writing style and admired the character development. I look forward to reading more of her work, particularly if she overcomes the only weakness that impairs this novel.

RECOMMENDED

When the Night by Cristina Comencini

First published in Italian in 2009; published in translation by Other Press on April 24, 2012

When the Night is a dark and oddly beautiful story of two regret-filled souls struggling to break free from their confining personalities.  The novel records two intersecting moments in their lives, fifteen years apart -- in many ways their most vital moments.

Mountain guide Manfred Sane and his brothers were raised by their father after their mother ran off with an American tourist.  Before the novel opens, Manfred’s wife, Luna, has left, taking their children with her.  Manfred has rented an apartment above his to Marina, who has taken her son to the mountains for a month, leaving her husband behind.  Marina is depressed; she hasn’t bonded with her son Marco, she never sleeps, she feels lonely and inadequate.  She is the opposite of the Supermom:  she wasn’t cut out for motherhood and she knows it.  Still, she hopes her stay in the mountains will renew her strength.

Manfred is silent, bitter, and abusive.  He learned from his father that women are not to be trusted.  Manfred’s observation of Marina, and particularly of her coma-like response when Marco is injured, reinforces his belief that children should be taken away from their mother as soon as they are born.  He suspects that Marina has deliberately harmed Marco, a suspicion instilled by his long-standing contempt for women.  He considers it his duty to provoke her confession.

As the novel unfolded I wondered whether it would turn into an unlikely love story or whether Manfred would kill Marina.  Are they two ships passing in the night or two ships colliding?  In its final section, When the Night jumps forward fifteen years.  The change (or lack of fundamental change) in the characters during the gap years makes clear that the month Marina spent in the mountains was pivotal for both of them.  But what does the present hold?

When the Night is told from the alternating points of view of Manfred and Marina.  Sometimes, when the two are together, the point of view changes from sentence to sentence.  The mild confusion that technique occasionally causes is more than offset by the value of seeing the same events almost simultaneously from opposing perspectives.

This isn’t a novel for readers who search for likable characters.  Still, there is understanding to be gained from the rather extreme examples the main characters offer of gender-based personality differences.  Although Marina is far from a prototypical female (given her lack of maternal instinct) and Manfred is a poor example of a male (given the disgust he feels in the company of women), their interaction with each other is quite typical:  Marina probes for a way to connect while Manfred is guarded, unwilling to open himself for her inspection.  Their differing perceptions impair their ability to communicate; they often speak at cross-purposes, fighting to connect in a moment of shared honesty.

It is in their extremes, however, that the characters offer the most insight.  Both characters are filled with self-loathing, although Marina is more honest with herself.  Manfred feels protective of Marco, perhaps with some cause but also because he distrusts the ability of any woman to raise a male child -- a product of his feeling of abandonment by his mother.  More than that, he feels the need to punish Marina for being a bad mother (perhaps born of a desire to punish his own mother).  He believes “you need to be strong to raise children” and Marina is anything but strong.  Manfred is the personification of misogyny yet he finds himself drawn to Marina, seemingly against his will.  Marina both loves and hates her son.  She loves her husband but hates him for not understanding her.  She yearns for romance but doesn’t believe in it; she views husbands as interchangeable, the choice of one man versus another as arbitrary, yet she finds herself drawn to Manfred.

Manfred’s perspective is told in stark language, featuring the sort of abruptly ending sentences that befit a man who doesn’t like to talk.  Marina’s perspective is narrated in a more descriptive style.  In both cases, Cristina Comencini writes penetrating prose that fully reveals two tortured individuals, apparently incapable of becoming the persons they want to be.  This short novel virtually chisels its characters from the mountains that surround them, exposing multiple facets, sharp edges, hidden features and cold facades.  Fans of character-driven fiction are particularly likely to regard When the Night as a memorable novel.

RECOMMENDED