Author: Javier Sierra
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Rating: WARTY!
Originally published as La Cena Secreta, I read the English translation of this novel some time ago, before I began blogging. I came across the audio book version of it in the library, so I decided to give it a listen so I could blog it here. The problem was that once I started listening, I also started wondering how in hell I'd managed to not only read this book, but also think it was worth retaining the book in my collection with a view to possibly re-reading it at some point down the road.
Clearly I'd found something in it the first time around that was just as clearly absent this time. Has my perspective on novels changed so much? It wasn't that long ago that I read this - maybe two years? Have I become so much more critical - so much less forgiving? I guess!
The novel is set around 1520 when Leonardo da Vinci was painting The Last Supper fresco. The conceit here is that it's the recorded words of Agostino Leyre, a chief inquisitor in the Catholic church. He's supposed to be putting this story on paper (or parchment or whatever) in his old age while living as a hermit, but no one actually writes like that in those circumstances! That struck me as false.
If you are writing a diary, you might record a conversation, but even then you wouldn't record it like you do in a novel. If your conversation went like this, for example:
Jane entered the room with an aura of frustrated anger covering her imposing form.
"That's it!" she said with an explosion of air that had evidently been tightly constrained by her lungs for far too long.
Mesmerized slightly by the rain of dust motes caught in the brilliant afternoon sunshine filtered by the trees outside and by the dirty windows of her apartment, it took me a minute to register the full force of her presence and her declaration, let alone figure out what was upsetting her.
Is something wrong?" I asked superfluously, trying to gain myself some time and perhaps elicit further information before I was forced to commit to a response and perhaps to yet another exercise in frustration with her.
"Have you not been listening?" she asked in sheer disbelief.
This engendered in me a sour feeling of further reduced assurance than I was already harboring. What was I, some sort of NSA operation that I listened in on her every communication?! "I try not to listen to people on the phone," I said, slightly nervously. The truth was that I'd tuned her out completely, and dissolved into a rather soporific day-dream, the memory of lunch still heavy on my stomach as it was.
Jane gave me one of her 'what do I have to do with you' looks and took a deep breath. "Dick no longer wants to run with me. He says I'm too slow for his pace and he's found a new partner. This is the guy I got back on his feet, and now I'm back to running alone. In these streets." She paused and I suddenly got the feeling that this was all about to come back on me. It always does. I hadn't even begun to get my head-shake in motion before her face took on a look like it was the dawn of a new age and she asked, "Why the hell don't you go running?"
Seeing that look on her face, I must admit I suddenly felt like it.
©Ian Wood 2014
Now let's consider that same event as written in the 'victim's' diary:
So I had lunch with Jane this afternoon, and we ended up back at her place, which is still a mess, and Dick the dick calls her out of the blue to say he's ditching her as a running partner. Now she expects me to saddle up. That ain't gonna happen. OTOH, I'm not about to let her start running these streets again on her own.
©Ian Wood 2014
See the difference? Obviously no one writes a diary the same way as everyone else, so your idea of a diary entry will differ from mine, but I guarantee you no one writes a diary like the first example, either; that's how it's written when it's not actually a diary but is actually a novel outright lying that it's a diary. In the same vein, no one writing a real reminiscence writes like Agostino Leyre is supposed to be doing here, so from the off, this thing shouted fake to me (but this kind of falsehood will win you medals and 'literary' prizes!). How did I get past that last time? I honestly don't know.
One thing I became really tired of hearing was multiple repetitions of "Santa Maria delle Grazie". This is simply a church name: Holy Mary of Grace. What I didn't get is why these names are never translated in novels? Why is everything else translated (for example, we might get Rome, not Roma in a novel or Florence in place of Firenze), but then we get Santa Maria delle Grazie? It makes no sense. Nor did it make sense to keep repeating this instead of simply referring to it as "the church" or "the cathedral" or some other variation. Just a pet peeve!
So the story is about Da Vinci hiding secrets in his paintings, and an anonymous "Soothsayer" making prophecies, and Leyre's investigation into this. I honestly don't recall the ending (or most of the plot). I just remember that I once liked this, but now apparently don't! So I can't recommend it!
