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A shocking wonderful surprise. A pitch-black noir, darker than the classic ones, in the Mediterranean sunshine
Total Chaos by Jean-Claude IzzoMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
A shocking wonderful surprise. This novel is a pitch-black noir, darker than the classic ones, in the Mediterranean sunshine. The theme of friendship and revenge of murdered friends is not new, it reminds us of The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, and The Long Goodbye. The story of three friends since childhood, immigrants and juvenile criminals, who grew up together then split up, even if their tie is lifelong, also recalls Once Upon a Time in America and it is the engine of the plot that is set about thirty years after their adolescence, when adult life has taken its toll. Hammett, Chandler and Scorsese’s crime movies are easy to spot in this novel, transported in a European milieu not different from the American scene.
Izzo has a great command of his hard-boiled, cynical but sentimental language and narrative technique. Chapter one is a third-person narration, straightforward and fast-paced, Hammett style. It is the incipit that ends up with Ugo’s death, haunted and then killed by the police, after his return to Marseille, many years after his voluntary exile, to kill Manu’s assassin. Then Fabio’s first-person narration takes over, a complete change in style, with longer sentences and more subordination that convey the feeling of Chandlerian narration, filled with digressions on the world and his feelings. There are many flashbacks of the past events of the three former friends so the whole story is revealed bit by bit. Izzo also has a strange technique: the chapters have real-time openings, then we go back to very recent past flashbacks, with extensive use of past perfects, then the narration returns to the present.
Fabio is a round character, a good ‘bad cop’ with a criminal past. The revenge plot is based on a double detection, so there is actually a main plot (the discovery of the real motives of Ugo’s killing and Fabio’s revenge) and the sub-plot (the killing, detection and revenge of the real damsel-in-distress of the story, Leila, who Fabio loves but never possesses, not to taint her innocence with his inevitably darkened soul). Fabio is a tough guy, a dropout filled with humanity and sensitiveness, a fully French existentialist who hates the world because of his exceptional sensibility. The reader immediately sympathises with him and is occasionally moved to tears.
Fabio’s masculine world – the underworld of criminal nocturne Marseille, the fake upper world of mafia bosses, the ‘cités’ of Arab immigrants and the ambiguous world of police and justice – is also filled with women, all of them dark ladies and the damsels-in-distress at the same time, round characters as well. The protagonist’s nausea with the world makes it impossible for him to love any woman and settle down, so his relationships with the different types of ladies in the novel are carnal and occasional. But the real cause of his impossibility to love is Lole, the main (dark) lady who appears only briefly in chapter one but is always present in the story and has a strong influence on the matter, in memories or flash-backs, like Rusty Regan in The Big Sleep. All three friends have always loved her since adolescence, and Fabio, the only survivor, can’t stop loving her even if he is not so keen to accept it. Lola’s return is the only positive element in the plot, maybe bringing some peace of mind to the burnout protagonist, the only final element of redemption. As usual, a case may be solved in the end but the criminal corrupt society remains unchanged and leads Fabio to the decision he cannot go on being a cop anymore.
The main themes behind the plot are immigration, integration and racism, mainly dealing with the Arab/ French clash, a topic exploited by the far-right Front National with its toxic connection to politics and power. Marseille in fact is a melting pot, a sample of the world, races and ethnic fights, another Gomorrah. Fabio both loves and hates Marseille, the city of bright sunshine and dark criminal underworld, a town actually not very different from Chandler’s L.A. Marseille is another protagonist of this book, with its colours, places, tastes, bars, bistros, restaurants, nightlife and refreshing waters. It makes you want to go there to feel the city the way Izzo hands it out to the reader.
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