The Flight of the Falcon

I adore the writing of Daphne du Maurier. She blends suspense, moving description and psychological intrigue in a way that few other writers have mastered. The Flight of the Falcon is not one of her more acclaimed works, it is largely overlooked, but I have always thought it one of the best. There is a deeper meaning hidden within its pages, that would appear to me to be about temptation, self-illusion, the struggle of good and evil within a man, and the importance of being willing to dare and to try and to perish in the effort.

Armino Fabbio is a nondescript tour guide, making his way through the familiar territory of Rome, when he is plunged into his past by a chance encounter with a woman, a drunken destitute woman, who reminds him of show more his childhood nurse, Marta. Because of this encounter, he returns to his roots, a town named Ruffano, where his father was the curator of a museum before his death during WWII. In Ruffano, he discovers that the past that he believed to be dead and gone is alive and all-consuming.

Woven throughout this story are religious images, but not a moral treatise. Christ and Satan seem at war here, but which is which is sometimes difficult to determine. At one point a fellow character quotes him Nietzsche, “He who no longer finds what is great in God will find it nowhere; he must either deny it or create it.” Much of this book is about that need to believe or create. Nothing about Armino’s past seems cut in stone, everything malleable, and as the pieces unfold he must determine how these truths alter his present and future. What is clear is that he will never be able to be an anonymous, uninvolved, unattached tour guide again.

I hope to re-read many of du Maurier’s novels this year. It has been long enough on each of them that they come to me fresh and alive, and sometimes even surprising. She writes the way Hitchcock directs, with pace and development that build to a crescendo. I love that feeling of being swept along by the wind and then plopped back to earth again. I’m pleased she took me along on the Falcon’s flight. show less

A strange story, not unpredictable. With a character like Aldo, it can only end one way. I caught the clue about Marta so I anticipated that "shocker" too.
What is more interesting is the way Beo idolizes Aldo after 20 years, how they fall back into the same relationship so quickly.
The town is as much a character in this story as any, perhaps even more than the palace. Good if you like old Italy, perhaps.

Well, I don't know about hypnotic suspense as it's described. The whole thing moves a bit too slowly and is too introspective in nature to be truly suspenseful. Plus it isn't difficult to guess how things are going to end up. Aldo's casual cruelty was too alien and somehow wishful, and Armino's willing passivity and phobia about lust, passion and sex meant it couldn't end any other way. The tension between them is well-drawn as are Armino's memories of them as children. Such a strange, enigmatic and closeted existence, completely torn apart by World War II.

The present time in the book is the 1960s and the attitude toward the war and those who fought it has changed. No more romance, no more drama. The younger generation is on the make, show more out to leave their own mark and don't want to be beholden to their parents. Armino is caught between; not young, but not part of his parents' generation either. He drifts through life with a job that is perfect to keep him in cigarette money, but apart from anything permanent. No entanglements for Armino. He seems to be equally afraid of his own potential (being his mother's son) as he is of women. The one woman he's close to in the novel, Carla Rasspa, seems to be written just to emphasize these fears, as if we didn't fully grasp them from Armino's own internal monologues.

Still, I was pretty interested the whole time I read it. The tone is strange, maybe a product of its time when people really did speak in a stilted, oblique fashion and got away with it. Everyone seems to get instantly and deeply involved with everyone else immediately upon meeting. Especially the students; they concern themselves so fully in Armino's life that I felt stifled by them myself.

And it's the clash of the students that is at the heart of the orchestrated violence that is Ruffano's grand festival. This year orchestrated by none other than Aldo himself and he's worked himself and the students into a frenzy; playing one side against the other in a way that is revealed slowly and wickedly. When we first meet him, we hope he can be the saving of Armino and give him back the family and belonging he so clearly needs. Then through direct and indirect actions, we see his is not the man he pretends to be.

This isn't du Maurier's best work, but it is a strong character study and full of understated tension. The links between the family's history and the forthcoming events are obvious and a bit heavy handed, but the writing is excellent as usual. Ruffano comes alive and its as if we've lived their all our lives. Small town secrets never really change. show less

I'm going to put myself into Daphne du Maurier's writer's brain for a moment. After all, she is a pretty brilliant writer, and as a writer myself, I can't help but admire her talent. Nowadays, people don't like a lot of prosy description, but take for instance, her description of the sunrise near the story's climax, which is gradual and building, and in context gives the reader the gradual, building portent of an event both ominous and amazing about to break upon the city (which it does): "First light was grey and cold, a phantom day, a temporary shifting of night's shadows, and then the sky hardened, becoming white, and the shrouded city turned to rose. The sun came up over the sleeping hills. Arrows of gold broke up the patterned show more valleys, then struck the shuttered windows of the city. The trees in the municipal gardens rustled, and the hesitant birds, waking to another day, stirred and murmured, then, as the light strengthened and the sunlight touched them, sang." It was a very purposeful bit of prose that accomplished it's task of stringing along the tension in the nerves of the character who is experiencing it. To continue in the author's brain a moment longer, let's imagine how du Maurier came to write the story. First, Ruffano, a beautiful little city in Italy, is just the sort of place a gothic style writer would set a novel of suspense (though Flight of the Falcon isn't gothic). Nevertheless, with it's ducal palace, winding streets, and ancient history overtones, it's a great setting for a du Maurier story. I wonder if she visited it first, and then decided to set a novel there, or if she wool-gathered the tale and then decided upon the setting? (#writerquestion) Anyhoo... if it was setting first, maybe she visited some of the historic sites, and then she had a dream. It was a bizarre dream, intertwining the history of a long dead and maniacal Count meshing with brothers in the 1960s who had lost one another during the most recent world war, each thinking the other had been dead for twenty years, each haunted by their own personal demons, and each with their own twisted view of their family's past. Now they've both accumulated a certain amount of success in odd ways, and they both believe they have a destiny to play out. So, I think Du Maurier had this dream, and in the weird, twisted way of dreams, she sewed all the pieces together and turned it into a novel. I did find myself compelled by the story, though it wasn't her best. I had to read it to discover what would happen with these brothers. It gave me a sick, worried feeling throughout, though at the end I wasn't terribly surprised. I was a little bit relieved in some sense. show less

My first du Maurier, and I am sold.

"We were right on time. Sunshine Tours informed its passengers on the printed itinerary that their coach was due at the Hotel Splendido, Rome, at approximately 1800 hours. Glancing at my watch, I saw that it wanted three minutes to the hour.
'You owe me five hundred lire,' I said to Beppo.
The driver grinned. 'We'll see about that in Naples,' he said. 'In Naples I shall present you with a bill for more than two thousand lire.'"

It's fairly rare that books really intrigue me from the very first line. I don't mind, I can spare a little time to get warmed up to the story as long as the writing is decent. But instant hook? Excellent! I was immediately curious. Who are these guys, why are they betting on show more this tour, who will wind up winning later!, and, what's going to happen on the way?! It's a pretty simple opening, but it drops you right into the middle of things, things that aren't huge, it's nothing major going on, apparently a little bet between someone and a tour bus driver. Yet it's somehow quite intriguing! It just works. At least it did for me.

The reviews here are all over the place, a couple love it, a couple think it's drab junk, others think her writing is enough to keep interest but it's not her greatest. Hmm!
All I can say is, I really loved this book. In my opinion, it was great writing, a compelling plot, interesting characters, gripping intrigue, a mild hint of romance, a bit of mystery... The Manchester Evening News blurbed it "Du Maurier at her best," and I have no other du Maurier to compare it to, yet, so I can't say whether they (or the reviews here) are correct. But I barely put it down once I started, and I am excited to read more of du Maurier in the future. show less

The Flight of the Falcon is one of Daphne du Maurier’s later suspense novels. Published just after The Glass-Blowers (1963) and before The House on the Strand (1969), The Flight of the Falcon is set in Rome and the town of Ruffano, Italy. Armino Fabbio is a tour guide, or courier, shepherding tourists from England and America (the Beef and Barbarians) throughout the Italian countryside.

One evening, he gives 10,000 lire to an old beggar woman in the street, who he later finds out was a) murdered and b) was his old childhood nurse. Deciding to investigate, Armino goes to his childhood hometown, Ruffano, where the town’s university has blossomed. Taking a job as a library assistant, Armino uncovers a secret relating to his own past. show more All of this is linked to an event, or mystery, that happened in Ruffano over 400 years previously.

I’ll say it over and over; Daphne du Maurier really understood how to create an atmospheric, suspenseful novel. One of the things I love about this book is that you can feel the tension between Armino and Aldo, although Armino doesn’t explicitly say so. This isn’t du Maurier’s strongest novel; there are some predictable elements to the plot. I also didn’t care much for the narrator, who seems to allow things to happen to him rather than being an integral part of the plot. Aldo was a much more interesting, compelling character. It was also highly unlikely to me that, as an apparent stranger to Ruffano, Armino would get so involved in the lives of the town’s inhabitants and students so quickly. But du Maurier’s talent for writing fast-paced, descriptive prose is unequaled. If you’re new to du Maurier’s writing, though, I’d start with another one of her novels first. show less

Armino Fabbio is a courier for a tour company. While escorting a group of British and Americans (beef and barbarians as they are called in the touring business) from Florence to Naples, he gives a 10,000 lire note to a peasant woman on the steps of a church. The next day he discovers that the woman was murdered and she had no money on her. Convinced that he caused her death by giving her the large sum, he attends at the police station with two of his tour group who want to tell the police about seeing her the night before. When he views the body he believes her to be the woman who was his nurse as a young boy. He decides to return to the city in which he was raised to investigate.

Armino left Ruffano at age 11 during the second world show more war. His older brother, Aldo, was killed when his plane was shot down and his father died in a prison camp. His mother took up with a German general and went to Frankfurt with him (taking Armino away from his home). Armino has never been back to Ruffano. His mother died of cancer a few years previous to the book. She had remarried and Armino took his stepfather's last name. Thus, when he returns to Ruffano, no-one connects him with the Donati family.

Armino finds a temporary job in the University library and looks into his old nurse's murder. He goes to his old house which he discovers is now owned by the Rector of the University. While waiting outside of it he sees what he believes must be a ghost for a male visitor to the house looks exactly like his brother Aldo.

Soon he discovers that his brother is indeed alive and the city's Art Director now. In this capacity he is responsible for the upcoming festival which will reenact a scene from the city's history.

Armino is overjoyed to find Aldo is alive but as the brothers rediscover each other, Armino wonders is Aldo is quite sane. Aldo has a band of followers who seem prepared to do anything for him. The festival re-enactment will pit two student factions against each other. And it becomes obvious that Aldo is involved with the Rector's wife. Is the evil Duke Claudio reincarnated as Aldo? And will the violent end to the Duke's reign be repeated during the festival? And who killed the old nurse?

Read the book for the answers. While the style of writing is somewhat dated and uses more British slang than a book involving only Italians should, the story is quite interesting. I was surprised by the ending although some of the smaller denouements were easier to guess. I was also surprised that the book was so sexual. It's not that there were any explicit sex scenes but the allusions to illicit sex were pervasive. For a book that was serialized in Good Housekeeping magazine in 1965 it seemed quite risque. show less