I’m one third through Consolata Lanza’s short story.
It translates like a breeze – despite a few curves that I’ll have to fine-tune later, like Consolata’s habit of slipping the odd regionalism in her otherwise crisp-clear Italian.
The story is a happily nasty number, as I already mentioned.
The author herself has placed a lengthy post on her blog, about the necessity of goin all the way through where violence is concerned, if violence is what the story needs.
Consolata’s fictional world is one in which bad stuff happens to bad people, so that we can be both horrified at what happens, but at the same time go “There, you bought it, creep!”
And creep’s the word.
The twist is this lady’s profoundly Piedmontese sensibility towards petty badness.
With an attention to etiquette details that feels like an update of Austen, miss Lanza’s world is full of petty villains – libidinous teachers, doped-out students, giggly chicks, less than honest workers.
We are not dealing with “Evil!”, but with stupidity, bad manners, lack of intelligence.
Compared to the cosmic horror of thelikes of Lovecraft, what the author offers us is much scarier as it’s much more commonplace, and very low-key.
