Author: Michael Schmicker (no website found)
Publisher: Palladino Books (no website found)
Rating: WARTY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!
A true cynic might say that the first problem with this novel is that it sports a recommendation from Kirkus on the front cover! Since Kirkus almost universally reviews novels not only positively but gushingly so, a Kirkus review is, for all practical purposes, quite worthless even assuming you buy into reviews written by people with whom you have no track record. Just when did Kirkus become "the authority" and why? And how?! Fortunately for this writer, I don't buy into Kirkus reviews; I made up my own mind as to whether this 'absorbs me from the first page'.
Actually, according to the numbering system used in this book, the first page isn't chapter one - it's the front cover! So no, I was not absorbed by the front cover sporting a review which tells me I'll be absorbed from the front cover! Chapter one begins on page eight, and this novel runs to page 276, but these 270-some pages of novel come in eighty-five chapters!
The 'about the author' page towards the back reveals that this author has written another work, which I personally also consider to be fiction, about people who supposedly have ESP. I don't believe in any of that crap because there's absolutely no evidence to support any of it, but I do love a good story about it. My hope was that this present work would at least offer that, but given that it was based on the life of demonstrated fraud "psychic" Eusapia Paladino (note the name of the publisher on my blog!), those hopes were stillborn, I'm sorry to report.
This is another first person PoV novel unfortunately, because you know writers of fiction suffer from the very pervasive delusion that it's illegal - if not a crime against nature - to write something in the third person! Few writers can successfully carry 1PoV because it ends up all "Me!" all the time, and it tends to be at best unrealistic and irritating, if not outright nauseating.
It's unfortunate that you can't pick an ebook off the shelf and peruse the first chapter since the book blurb never reveals person. Had I known this was 1PoV I would have put it back on the shelf, so I was in the position of going into it hoping that this author was one of the few, the precious few, the band of authors, who can write this person and make it readable. On the positive side, the author didn't do too badly there, and he does have the sense to make his prologue chapter one, so there was hope!
This novel is set at the turn of the 20th century up though the first world war and the narrator, Tomaso Labella (Thomas the beautiful?!), is telling us of Alessandra, supposedly a 'physical medium' whom he first met in 1899. She can, we're told, levitate objects and move them around, although no one has ever explained intelligently to me what the heck any of that has to do with contacting the dead! It remains a complete mystery, yet this is what physical mediums would have us believe!
There are some anachronisms in this novel, too. The author mentions that purported psychic Daniel Dunglas Home was "entertaining royals" but since he died in 1886, it was hardly likely he was entertaining anyone in 1899! Also we're told that when Alessandra was thirteen, her father was shot for supporting Garibaldi, which would have been roughly in 1872. It's hardly likely that people were being shot for being a supporter of Giuseppe Garibaldi when around that time he was being elected to the Italian parliament and was leading Italian troops with the support of the government...!
That aside, the story tells of a woman in her forties, who mesmerizes the much younger Tomaso for reasons which are really unexplained (in the portion I read, there was no "erotic" despite book blurb claims!). The book borrows from The Godfather movie and claims he was (metaphorically) hit by a lightning bolt. Alessandra has been in the medium business for some time, managed by a sadistic Mafia-style husband from who she is ineffectually planning to escape. She gets her chance when a purported scientist is won over by her abilities, and sponsors a tour. That was as far as I got.
The writing wasn't technically bad - no huge grammatical or spelling errors, for example - but it was uninspired and uninspiring. By one quarter the way through I had no interest whatsoever in the story or in any of the people in it. There was nothing really gripping or engrossing going on and the characters were neither outstanding nor endearing. I had no interest in continuing to read a novel which offered so little when there are other novels begging for my attention which promise much more.
