Dreamed about London's body

In a fresh, last year production, work by Tonino Benaquista “Malavita” (“Amphora”, translation from French by A. Belyak) the “image-making” theme begun in the novel “Someone Else” continues. In the first case, two men, experiencing a midlife crisis, “on a dare” agreed to change their lifestyle, appearance and occupation. In “Malavita,” an entire American family is forced to hide in the French wilderness under an assumed name, hiding their past and disguising their occupation.

The plot revolves around the godfather of the New York mafia, Giovanni Manzoni, who handed over half of his former “comrades” to the FSB and is now “soaking” in a Norman town under the protection of special services. He himself poses as a writer collecting material about the landing in Normandy, his wife is engaged in charity work, his daughter charms her classmates, and his son creates a school group - an exact copy of Cosa Nostra. The paradox is that the only task - not to stick out, not to shine, not to stand out - turns out to be absolutely impossible for all four of them. That’s why they are American gangsters, and not paddling extras, to “shine” against the backdrop of the local trash heap. Dad truly believes in his destiny as a writer. The son secretly dreams of following in the footsteps of his ancestors. And women are too good to go unnoticed. The heroines in Benaquista's novels are always surrounded by a mystical aura of secret knowledge. And these two actually look like angels, exiled to earth to somehow justify the sins of the mafia monster. If Mommy is spying on the entire neighborhood using the latest spy technology, it’s only to identify those who need her charitable actions.

At first, “Malavita” seems like an optional variation on the theme of “The Sopranos”: mafiosi are people too, they love, they cry, they suffer from tooth decay. But the further, the louder the main theme of the late Benaquista sounds: this professional cynic and wit, it turns out, seriously believes in the transformative power of creativity. In the novel “Someone Else,” he “turned” the last coward and klutz into a successful superman, freeing his creative talent and forcing him to turn to literature. In the famous "Saga", four inveterate losers turn television show business on its head. In Malavita, Benaquista goes even further: he doesn’t just sit down a complete scoundrel at a typewriter, but even gives him a first-person narration. A witty story about the invasion of American gopniks into a decent French province smoothly flows into the repentant monologue of the main scoundrel. This is what captivates Benaquista’s novels: read it and believe that Leo Tolstoy is dormant within you. Very, you know, positive self-deception.

But the main event of recent weeks was not the brilliant novel by Tonino Benaquista, but Peter Ackroyd’s book “London: a biography” (translated from English by V. Babkov and L. Motylev), which was finally published by the Olga Morozova Publishing House. In this long (900 pages) and fascinating, detective-like story, two intrigues come together at once. On the one hand, it is the most fashionable city in Europe, with its flea markets, colorful clothes, radical rock music, the best art galleries and crazy architecture. On the other hand, native Londoner Peter Ackroyd, who previously traded in mystical stories about golems and dismembered corpses. London was always one of the characters in his novels and in the end remained the main and only character.

But what appears on the pages of the “Biography” is not the city about which the most persistent stereotypes have developed: pubs, fog, double-decker trolleybuses, Big Ben and malignant pneumonia. Ackroyd, like a seasoned pathologist, “cut” centuries-old London history into small pieces. “The city for me is a living organism. Its alleys are like capillaries, and its parks are like lungs. In rain and fog, its stones seem to bleed. He had his own childhood and adolescence. He gets sick and dies,” the writer honestly admits.

In his book, he collected hundreds of mystical stories, urban anecdotes and tales about a variety of “symptoms” of London life: noise, smells, acoustics, cruelty, gluttony, gluttony and alcoholism - a total of 86 chapters. Ackroyd's London, as a person, is fierce and gentle, ugly and beautiful, demanding and generous. From the chaos of little things and everyday details, Ackroyd managed to put together a portrait of a gigantic body - alive, sick, aging, resorting to cosmetics and plastic surgery. In one of the interviews, the writer admitted that he created the London that he himself needed.

“London has always been a city of visions and prophecies. It was the home of angels and devils. It was a place where miracles happened. Who can measure its depth? As for the depth of London, it is not for us to judge, but the fact that such a book has not been written about any other city in the world is certain.

Natalia BABINTSEVA