Translated by Gregory Dowling
The late Italian writing partners, Fruttero and Lucentini, worked together for decades, along the way writing five novels. Last year, Bitter Lemon Press published the first English translation of The Lover of No Fixed Abode. First published in Italy in 1986, it is a mystery and a romance, but it turned out to have much more hidden in its pages, taking a distinctly mystical turn in its latter chapters.
Now, Dowling has translated another of their unusual mysteries; Runaway Horses dates from 1983. Those of you who know a little of Tuscany may recognise Siena’s Piazzo del Campo and horses racing around it in the famed Palio races each summer on its cover. Although I’ve been to Florence and Pisa, I never made it to Siena on my Tuscan hols, a place I’d still love to visit one day, but maybe not for the Palio itself – the excitement and crowds could be just too much!
The novel follows a couple from Milan, lawyer Enzo Maggione and his wife Valeria. They are travelling to stay at a farm near Siena where:
Valeria’s brother had retired a few years ago to live a “different life” with a group of friends: all ex-managers, ex-bankers, ex-advertisers, ex-something or other who had had enough of the polluted and chaotic metropolis and who now culivated first fruits and olives and sold preserves and wine at very dear prices; very dear people whom the lawyer could not take seriously.
My first reaction was “Pretentious! Moi?” Perhaps it’s just as well they never made it there, as a storm is brewing as they approach Siena that evening, and they take the wrong turning off the main road in the pouring rain, ending up at a grand villa where the owners graciously take them in to dry off. When the phone lines go down, they’re invited to stay for dinner, and indeed the night, which seemed a no-brainer. However, as any reader of country house mysteries will attest, that should have put them on their guard for strange things to happen!
Both will fall for members of the household; Valeria for owner Count Guidobaldo and Enzo for the beautiful young Ginevra, visiting for the Palio. They’ll end up having to stay for there will be a murder… then they’ll go to the second race of the Palio with their hosts and objects of their affection, who support different contrade – the historic factions, in the race.
Before any of this happens though, Valeria gets her bum bitten by someone who scuttles away before she can see them. She seems both perturbed and unperturbed by this – maybe the bum-biter lives up to that stereotype of Italian men pinching women’s bottoms that was prevalent at the time? It turns out though, that the perpetrator of this assault joins them for dinner. He is a small man with a huge self-importance – Puddu, king of the Palio jockeys – whom any of the contrade would wish to hire to ride their horses. During the night there is a terrifying shriek which wakes Valeria, but she manages to get back to sleep. The next morning she goes down to the library to discover:
They were all there. Ascanio was fine and was gazing out of a French window with a toothbrush in his hand; Elisabetta was smoking; Ginevra was sitting cross-legged on the carpet; Enzo, in his new red-and-blue silk dressing gown was bending over someone who was lying or who had fallen in front of the fireplace, which was still full of grey ash. It was Puddu, dressed in a dark pullover, jeans and boots, clutching a hand to his throat and staring up at the allegories on the ceiling with dilated, unmoving eyes.
So Enzo and Valeria are thus tied to their hosts for the foreseeable until the carabinieri release them.
Right back at the beginning, I described this book as an unusual mystery. It certainly is that. As with the other novel, the whole is narrated by an unseen voice, all-knowing. It alternates between Enzo primarily, watching the Palio event itself with Ginevra while Valeria watches from another window further around the piazza with Guidobaldo – told in the present tense – and the events beginning three days prior as they travel towards Siena – told in the past tense.
Throughout we are taught about the history of the Palio; about the factions or contrade; how the series of two races are run as there are 17 contrade, and only 10 can race; the symbology and rituals surrounding the race; the horses and jockeys and so on. I now feel quite educated about it. All this information, and there is a lot of it, is spaced throughout the novel. As a result you never quite feel lectured by it, bar at the beginning where Enzo is trying to explain some of the intricacies to Valeria in the car – she’s not really interested in that detail you can see. A clever distinction between showing and telling, and this knowledge is essential to how the plot, such as it is, progresses.
All wound up with this is the state of Enzo and Valeria’s marriage, which has been rocky for a long time and is in danger of disintegrating totally. The fact that they end up in separate rooms without any demurral and are soon both attracted to other members of the household emphasises this, and pervades through the book.
This is a mystery in which the crime is secondary; the race is everything. Enzo and Valeria are the equivalent of Rocky Horror’s Brad and Janet, thrown into the maelstrom of decadence, corruption, bribery and history, emerging from it as different people. That all-knowing narrator’s satirical take on the events is cheeky and often leaves us to make up our own minds, nothing is totally clear-cut in this novel – well almost nothing.
Having experienced a similar sort of narration in the previous book by this pair I read, I wasn’t expecting a straight-forward crime novel in this one, other readers may find this aspect confusing. For me though, Runaway Horses was all the more refreshing for its refusal to toe the line in that respect. I really enjoyed it., and hope that Dowling will continue to translate their remaining books for us.
Source: Own copy Bitter Lemon Press paperback original, 2025, 208 pages. BUY at Blackwell’s via my affiliate link (free UK P&P)
