The Girl of His Dreams by Donna Leon
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Book Reviews of The Girl of His Dreams
Book Review: Wonderfully Clear Brunetti Mystery
Summary: 5 Stars
This mystery novel in Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti series, set in an increasingly touristy Venice, is shorter and more clear than her earlier works. I simply couldn't stop reading it once I'd started, and enjoyed it as much for the way it illuminates the inner workings of Italian society as for the murder mystery aspects. The view of how handicapped the law is in Italy is startling, as is the picture of the Roma people. An extremely enjoyable mystery.Book Review: Donna Leon
Summary: 5 Stars
One of my favorite writers, Donna Leon is exquisitely precise, never rambling, never superficial. She has a knack for knowing what to tell us, and what to let us learn, and how to make us really, really want to learn it.Book Review: A Good read but best if not your first Donna Leon novel
Summary: 4 Stars
I "discovered" this series in 2000 when I was in Venice and was looking for a book for the plane ride home. It was, fortunately, Death at La Fenice - first in the series. I was so fascinated by the story, I walked by the opera house only to see it under repair from the fire that caused so much damage.
Since then, I have been reading my through the novels and find them well written and full of the kind of local details that give the reader an insider's feel for a city as complex as Venice.
This novel shows a new side to Brunetti - displaying has passion for children and contempt for uncaring parents. Happily, he maintains his love for food, wine, a city without tourists and his family. But my favorite character remains Venice and to a lesser degree, the Italian character and spirit. Italians are a passionate people and this passion centers on family, wine and food, in that order (in my experience). Donna Leon gives us a main character who exemplifies all of these but not in a cartoon. Brunetti seems to be a real person who is both complex and unpredictable.
When confronted by a Gypsy family that shows no love for a lost child, you can tell Brunetti is made both angry and sad. Angry at the lack of passion for a lost little girl by the father and sad for the child who lost her youth and innocence long before she was drowned in a canal.
Leon writes about Venice without rose colored glasses. There are warts to be seen, and she does not shy away from showing the reader that this city is more than art, food and churches.
I look forward to reading them all and recommend that you try to read them in order as I find Ms Leon is evolving as a writer, delving into more complex plots and sub-plots. Without the prior knowledge of her journey, you may not appreciate the delicate nuance she writes into every page.
Book Review: Nice comfort read
Summary: 3 Stars
The title of this 17th instalment of Commissario Brunetti's investigations is slightly misleading; the girl is nobody's dream, but she is dead and appears to Brunetti in his nightmares rather than his dreams.
The opening of the book sees us at the funeral of Brunetti's mother which occasions more nostalgia in all concerned than real grief. Brunetti then is asked by the priest officiating at the funeral to investigate a shady guru-type priest. Sometime later Brunetti and his faithful sidekick Vianello find a young blond girl in one of the canals. The subsequent investigation leads them to a gipsy camp outside Venice and has them confronting their own prejudices.
In terms of mystery this novel is quite unexciting. As always, Brunetti's dogged intellect unravels what has happened to his satisfaction, but nonetheless he is unable to bring justice to the victim; I understand that the law and justice seldom go hand in hand (in real life), but in the case of Leon's novels it gets more and more difficult to bear that the perpetrators of crime hardly ever are brought to justice (and by this I don't mean that they are punished by the law).
In my opinion this is one of the weaker instalments, the mystery is very unsatisfying, nothing exiting happens either in terms of the plot or with the characters but life for Brunetti just ebbs along the way we have come to expect. This is not necessarily a bad thing; in a world where one is daily bombarded by the ravages of war, hunger, poverty, unemployment and finds it increasingly difficult to find any meaning or constancy, the predictability of Brunetti's world offers great comfort. That is not to say that Brunetti lives in a perfect world; he also laments the inefficiency of government, the stupidity of his superior, the increasing number of tourists that deluge Venice, the extinction of fruit and vegetable vendors in Venice, the rise of the mafia and so on. But aside from all this his life moves in an orderly fashion; he goes to work, he cleverly manipulates his superior into letting him do what he wants, he has Signorina Elettra do illegal but highly efficient computer searches, he collects favors and dispenses favors in the course of his investigations, has profound discussion with Vianello and his wife, ambles along the little streets and canals of Venice and every so often enjoys a delicious meal.
I know that Donna Leon is a teacher and I like literary allusions but recently I find it increasingly difficult to escape the impression that some of her literary reflexitivity seems a touch forced; how else can it be explained that whatever Classic Brunetti happens to read tallies so nicely with what else is going on in the book?
I liked "The girl of his dreams" quite a lot and think it is a very nice "comfort read" but it seems to lack some of the profundity that characterized some of the earlier instalments. Nevertheless, I'm looking very much forward to the next book in the series.
Book Review: Not the strongest in the series
Summary: 3 Stars
I'm a big fan of Donna Leon and her Commissario Guido Brunetti series. However, in a series with almost a score of entries, there are going to be some standouts and a few misses. This entry falls more towards the latter category.
The basic problem is that the two parallel cases which concern the novel (a frequent technique of Leon) are not of equal interest. One concerns shady fund raising from devout Christians. The other involves a young girl floating dead in a canal. Of these two, the former is not interesting. The latter is, especially after we learn that she comes from a gypsy family. Leon gives us many trips to the gypsy camp and her rendition of the gypsy culture rings as true as it is interesting. That story is quite good and well done, but every time it seems to gain momentum, we are pushed back to the clerical scandal. In her books, Leon has cast a jaundiced eye on the Church many times before. There's not much new here and it isn't a very satisfying story line.
As usual, Leon serves up very warm sketches of the family life of the Brunettis. The juxtaposition of the corrupt state of Italy with the health of the Brunetti family is a constant theme in the series, and yet Leon always manages to make our glimpses into the family life interesting. The local color about Venice as always, is also quite good. However, with 50% of the caseload being about an uninteresting case that seems to meander more than it develops, The Girl of His Dreams is not the best book in the series.