The Girl From Venice by Martin Cruz Smith

Coeur de Lion, Bath  2nd February 2017

Mark T was unfortunately unable to attend the book group to discuss his own book choice due to the launch of his brother’s own book taking place on the same night, so it fell to NRB to write up the notes.  Mark sent us his thoughts in advance which started with explaining why he had chosen it, possibly a good indication of how he felt about it.  Basically he had been hoping for a good book which immersed you in Venice, but he didn’t feel it had done that.  The love story was disappointing, the “resurrection” of the girl unbelievable, the match-up of coarse fisherman and rich Jewish girl rather strange, and the courtship all over in one page (and as we know Mark likes authors to take their time over such things!). He found some of the writing rather bland and a bit “Janet and John”.  Overall Mark got some enjoyment, but overall found it a disappointment.

Sadly no one at the meeting was ready to counter that point of view.  Steve in fact felt rather more strongly about it. Having had to pay £8.99 for the book and not even got the coloured map that the hard-back edition contained, he felt distinctly robbed and was amazed that the book had “passed muster”. To him it had the feel of a pot boiler.  It started OK and he enjoyed learning a bit about fishing in the lagoon, and the body, the gunboat encounter etc was all quite dramatic, but after that the disbelief set in as the humble fisherman supposedly turned into a kind of James Bond. After that Steve found he resented the book for the remainder.  He found the dialogue stilted and thought the last few chapters were as if the writer just couldn’t be bothered.

Chris B bought the physical hardback but reassured us that after postage it worked out about the same  cost as the Kindle edition.  He liked it as a light, pleasant read, but he found it somewhat odd because surely a book about these types of events at this time should have been full of nervous tension, not pleasant at all! Some scenes did have a certain tension to them, but as the action moved to Salo and the cast of characters became more bizarre the whole thing became less and less real.

Rob was in broad agreement with this.  He saw it as a light, innocuous, easy read, but rather reminiscent of The Sunrise Hotel.  He did find the bits about Mussolini at the end of the war of some interest as it is a part of the second World War that he knew little about, but then again the details seemed too implausible to take at all seriously.

Mark W was also reminded of the Victoria Hislop howler.  He read it, succeeded in finishing it, but experienced no tension and summed it up as “claptrap”.

Neil was similarly unimpressed. He too was put off almost as soon as the girl miraculously came back to life, and never recovered from that point onwards.  Not usually being one to want to stop and highlight sections in the book or make notes, he had made several on this occasion to highlight just how clumsy he felt the writing had been, how unbelievable he found both the characters and plot and to point out errors in the basic continuity, for example when Cenzo ends up driving the woman’s Alfa Romeo which, in only the previous chapter, had actually been given to another woman.  He thought it highly ironic that the editor had been credited at the end when he/she should instead have been fired and banned from ever editing books again.

Chris W finished the comments in the pub….by revealing that he had actually really wanted to be the first to speak for a change because he had felt so emphatic about how bad it was. He really noticed the contrast with Golden Hill which he had enjoyed so much and the sense that where Golden Hill had immersed you in a time and place and made you willingly accept what took place, this book did not. He was also amazed at how the girl was apparently so unaffected by the loss of her family. He also picked up on lots of non-sequiturs where things were described but seemed completely unlinked. He described it as one of the least rewarding books he had read in the group.

From India, Richard commented: I generally concur with it being bad, but not REALLY awful.  
It was easy to read, and parts were enjoyable, and I quite liked the early bits set in Venice and the lagoon (hence not awful); but Mark's comments about it feeling like a draft rang true - there were a lot of inconsistencies, things explained more than one (as if he had forgotten that he had already done it, but as he never read through the draft, he wouldn’t know), really odd things (she lived with the man who betrayed her and her family in the same hospital ward for months / ?years? but then said she didn’t know who he was but would recognise his voice?! - and how could he have lived there for months if he was also being a film producer in Salo), and the last 30% got less and less interesting and the writing seemed more and more desultory.

So overall, not a great response from anyone to the book, but it was an enjoyable discussion nonetheless and thanks was noted for Mark making the booking of the space in the Couer de Lion.  The group was also temporarily enlarged by a young man by the name of Seb who got talking to the two Chris’s in the bar and came upstairs to plead his case to join the club and even helped proceedings by reading out Mark T’s email at the beginning.  However, as he was at last 20 years younger than even the youngest current member, it was felt that he might  not be a natural fit.  Very pleasant young man though and apparently full of confidence.