To Each His Own

A 'detective' novel, it's really more than that--a tightly written novel about society and life in small town Sicily. Sciascia somehow gives the reader a real sense of place without lengthy descriptions. One of those books that's thin (Sciascia, in an interview, talked about 'thin' and 'thick' writers) yet complex, but reads very cleanly and quickly. No idea how he did it.

What's strange about To Each His Own is how it feels like it's not the story Leonardo Sciascia wanted to write. Based on the awkward digressions thrown in here and there, Sciascia really wanted to drop some serious social commentary about contemporary Sicily, but all he had was a standard detective story. Professor Laurana, a man attempting to solve a double homicide, does his best to follow leads, but he keeps running into people that want to bloviate on the ills of their island far more than they want to help the investigation. The point these minor characters care most about is that Sicily's corruption is so foundational that trying to clean things up would do more harm than good, which is fine, I guess, but I just don't find it show more particularly compelling. "Forget it, Laurana. It's Chinatown." only needs to be said once.

The novel's saving grace is its humor. The social club at which all the town's men drink and bicker and perv out is an awesome place. I wanted to be there to watch Colonel Salvaggio throw a big tantrum about the potential impropriety of one of Arturo Pecorillo's jokes and then five minutes later start pretending to suckle on his friend's widow's boob.

The story is fine, but I think Sciascia's efforts fell short of his ambitions here. show less

Apparentemente solo un "giallo", poi un apologo ironico e farsesco, infine una spietata critica culturale. Tutto questo in un racconto immediatamente memorabile, come sempre per Sciascia scritto in maniera eccezionale.

Aggiornamento 2021
Un piacere rileggere una vicenda così esemplare, così compiuta, una summa leggera (non a caso tradotta da Petri in un film - che non ho visto) da cui emergono tutti i tratti di Sciascia.

A reserved pharmacist in Sicily goes hunting every Wednesday in the season with his friend, a doctor. They always do well, "a massacre of hares and rabbits." On a Tuesday he receives a death threat. By nightfall on hunting day they are both shot dead.

Various theories abound; jealous hunters, a sly romance gone bad, etc. A professor named Laurana seeks the answer for his own edification, and figures it out. He's going to keep it to himself, knowing the consequences. But will they let him live? At the end the entire town appears to have the answer, begging the question of how many people will be killed to keep the secret.

Leonardo Sciasca appears to be commenting on Sicilian society and the mafia culture in general.

Very neat novella that follows the gormless Professor Laurana in his erratic attempt to piece together the clues to solve a double-murder, about which everyone else in the village knows the score but is careful not to stir up the nest of corruption, politics and marital affairs. They are a colourful bunch of locals, like the rector of Sant' Anna who has a side-hustle in flogging off religious artifacts and a line in bawdy jokes. Over the village sits the conservative Dean and his nephew Rosello, the mover and shaker who contracted the killings after fearing his shady dealings would be exposed by the victim Dr Roscio. Through all this Laurana stumbles along to his doom, a socially awkward and sexist fool who is easily manipulated at the show more end by the femme fatale. The novella has a curious style, observant and quirky with a deeper sense of how 60s Italy was being shaped by the corrupt Christian Democrats but still had a lively Communist set. I read it out to Sheila, we both loved it. show less

When this novel opens, Manno, the town pharmacist, receives a note in the mail stating, "This letter is your death sentence." Ultimately deciding that the threat is a joke, he ignores it and goes on a planned hunting trip the next day with Dr. Roscio. Tragically, they both fail to return at the end of the day, and their murdered bodies are later discovered. The police investigation follows the course of trying to determine what Manno did to warrant the death threat and its implementation, with Dr. Roscio's death considered to be that of an innocent bystander to an intentional murder. However, Professor Laurana pursues another course--perhaps the intended victim was Dr. Roscio, and the death threat to Manno was merely intended to throw show more the authorities off.
This novel is an unconventional mystery and an examination of Sicilian society. According to the forward, the novel, "dramatizes from the inside out how a community will fabricate the appearance of truth from the tissue of unsubstantiated insinuations, usually because it needs to believe the worst of human beings." It highlights a Sicilian society in which, "silent complicity...allows those who know who committed the killings and why---nearly everyone around...knows---to withhold their knowledge...."

Highly recommended. show less

Thanks to reading Sciascia's Equal Danger, I discovered that I'd had this novella on my shelves for almost five years. And I liked it even better. Sciascia takes his epigraph from Edgar Allan Poe: "Let it not be supposed that I am detailing any mystery, or penning any romance." And indeed, while the protagonist, an educated but not street-wise schoolteacher, who still lives with his mother, earnestly tracks down clues to the double murder of a pair of hunting buddies, a doctor and a pharmacist, and becomes enamored of the doctor's beautiful widow, the reader develops his or her own suspicions and, in the end, it turns out almost everyone else in the Sicilian town knew what was going on all along.

For, like Equal Danger, this is a story show more only masquerading as a mystery. But it was even more enjoyable for me because, in addition to Sciascia's wonderful writing style and his pointed wit, this novel involves more complex and interesting characters, is more indirect in its indictment of the breadth of corruption, collusion, and complicity, and provides a broader portrait of many aspects of Sicilian society, including politics, the Church, and sex. I can't resist quoting this comment about the schoolteacher's reluctance to help turn in a guilty person, one among many that are both thoroughly delightful and eminently quotable:

"Laurana had a a kind of obscure pride that made him decisively reject the idea that just punishment should be administered to the guilty one through any intervention of his. His had been a human, intellectual curiosity that could not, and should not be confused with the interest of those whom society and State paid to capture and consign to the vengeance of the law persons who transgress or break it. At play in this obscure pride were the centuries of contempt that an oppressed people, an eternally vanquished people, had heaped on the law and all those who were its instrument; a conviction, still unquenched, held that the highest right and truest justice, if one really cares about it, if one is not prepared to entrust its execution to fate or God, can only come from the barrels of a gun." p.120 show less