Martin Booth (1) (1944–2004)

One more point for the "Book is Better than the Movie" club! The movie in fact, called "The American" and starring one George Clooney, was quite a hair-pullingly dull dud. And let's look at how they got it wrong: gorgeous Italian village setting, tender scenes of peaches and brandy, simmering hints of intrigue and pursuit, an unlikely love story, and that wonderful title and they botched ALL that up. How did they get the movie so wrong? In it, from what I can dimly recall, Clooney moped around spending time caressing various gun parts. Nothing much happened. Then it ended.

But happily in the book, even though not that much happens, one doesn't regret spending time with Signor Farfalle (Mr. Butterfly) as our hero is called by the villagers. In fact the opening scenes hooked me something bad. I wanted to BE there sitting with old Father Benedetto under the peach trees every evening, discussing the meaning of history and drinking armagnac. I wanted to climb all the stairs to the octagonal loggia of the hero's house, watching the Italian night sky alive with fireflies, eating that rose-petal jam or gorging on wild honey. I wanted to mosey around the cafes drinking espresso, chatting with villagers who give me sweet nicknames.

That's where the desires end, though. For our man, you see, is 'very private' for a darn good reason. Slowly he recounts various reasons why we shouldn't actually know anything about him: not the name of the village, not his own name. The way he talks about guns and gun parts tells us plainly that we'd be wise not to ask questions. In fact at times I got the feeling I was reading an actual memoir of an expat in Italy, with liberal recounting of his past lives in other places.

Only towards the end of the book does the relationship with Clara become prominent. This young student moonlights as a lady of the night at the local bordello, and sure enough there's more to her than that. Alas the gentleman has hinted that things won't end well and they don't. Even if the final twist was a tad guessable, it still arrived satisfyingly. A tragedy occurs in the town center, and from it ripple multiple smaller tragedies.

Overall then, an intensely satisfying read for the Italian-village part of the story. Once before I loved a book just for a certain part of its setting, and no surprise that too was an Italian village: I'm thinking of Jesse Walters's Beautiful Ruins. Maybe it's finally time to head there after all; enough time has been spent mooning about and drooling over rural Italy in pictures, videos, movies, and books.… (lisätietoja)

Less interesting as a personal memoir than as a record of an expat child's life in post-WWII Hong Kong. Booth explores widely.

> The proliferation of mosquitoes demanded we sleep under mosquito nets: the bungalow was above the Wong Nei Chong valley, an infamously malarial area in the early days of the colony. One could pick up the high-pitched whine of these minuscule insect fighter bombers approaching only to hear it abruptly halt when they hit the netting. This would then agitate as a gecko ran down the muslin to consume the insect, returning to the top of the net to await the next one. My mother wondered aloud that if evolution moved any faster, geckoes would soon learn to weave webs as spiders did.

> Apart from the tailors' window displays of lengths of cloth and suits hanging off mannequins, every shop window was a glittering tableau of expensive watches, men's and women's jewellery, pens, cameras, lenses and binoculars. I knew I could not just walk into one of these shops so I worked the obvious ploy, waiting until a tourist couple entered and tagging along camouflaged as their child

> In the end someone fitted a shorter cord to the telephone so that, when he flung it, it reached the extent of its flex and fell harmlessly on to the carpet. The Chinese staff called him mok tau (blockhead) and worse. They often used these names to his face but as he spoke no Cantonese, they were safe. I once heard a clerk call him gai lun jai (chicken penis boy): the clerk must have assumed that, as I was my father's son, I spoke no Cantonese either.

> My father's left hand struck quicker than a cobra. Grabbing me by the back of the neck, he forced me to bend over, then, with all his might, he hit me four times in quick succession on the buttocks. I did not cry: I would not give him the satisfaction. 'Now get into bloody bed.' He was grinding his teeth with rage. It was from that moment that I hated my father, truly abhorred him with a loathing that deepened as time went by and was to sour the rest of both our lives.

> The low buildings, most well over a century old, looked out across a valley of rice paddies, banyan, paper bark and lychee trees. Behind every house or farmstead was a stand of huge yellow, green-striped bamboos, some of the stems as thick as my thigh. These, I discovered, had been deliberately planted in times past to attract snakes. When I first heard it, this information astounded me. I asked if the snakes were there to be caught for the pot, but was told that the occupants of the houses were farmers who stored their rice in the settlement. And rats ate rice. And snakes ate rats.

> The tram company paid for the damage. They also accepted liability for the next two, identical accidents. On the fourth, they sued for remuneration of income lost due to delayed services. They did not win the case. As a result, however, my father – like my mother before him – was the cause of a change in the law. It was henceforth illegal to stop a vehicle on the tram lines.… (lisätietoja)