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Runaway Horses
by
Carlo Fruttero
and
Franco Lucentini
general information | our review | links | about the author
| Title: | Runaway Horses |
| Authors: | Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini |
| Genre: | Novel |
| Written: | 1983 (Eng. 2025) |
| Length: | 208 pages |
| Original in: | Italian |
| Availability: | Runaway Horses - US |
| Runaway Horses - UK | |
| Runaway Horses - Canada | |
| Place de Sienne, côté ombre - France | |
| Der Palio der toten Reiter - Deutschland | |
| Il Palio delle contrade morte - Italia | |
| from: Bookshop.org (US) |
- Italian title: Il Palio delle contrade morte
- Translated by Gregory Dowling
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Our Assessment:
B : unusual but appealing Siena-mystery
See our review for fuller assessment.
The complete review's Review:
Better known as chroniclers of Turin, the writing team of Fruttero & Lucentini here turn their attention to Siena -- though even the protagonists of Runaway Horses, Avvocato Lorenzo (Enzo) Maggioni and his wife, Valeria, wind up making a stop there more or less by accident.
They had been on their way from Milan to visit Valeria's brother's farm, located between Arezzo and Siena, when they got sidetracked and waylaid in a bad storm, winding up at the door of a villa where they were then taken in and then invited to spend the night; they accepted, and soon find themselves caught up in rather more than they could have anticipated.
Siena is famous for the Palio, a horse race conducted in the city center twice a year, on 2 July and 16 August, and the Maggionis hit town just as preparations are under way for the second running.
Covering some three days, Runaway Horses shifts back and forth between present and near past in its chapters.
It opens with Enzo Maggioni looking out over the Piazza del Campo at the procession leading up to the Palio; his wife is also a spectator, from a different vantage point, with Enzo occasionally picking her out of the crowd through a pair of binoculars.
He'd never been to the Palio -- indeed:
The Palio was for him just another of those folkloristic events that take place in many cities, consisting of ten per cent tradition (more or less spurious) and ninety per cent tourism; he would never have imagined that his wife Valeria and he might end up involved in it. To what extent, in exactly what way, he doesn't yet know. But he has some clues, some strong suspicions.In slowly filling in the near-backstory, with the flashbacks to the time leading up to the Palio, especially among the collection of people the Maggionis find at the villa they wind up staying at, Fruttero & Lucentini build up the tension, weaving what is, indeed, a mystery. Along the way they note that: "in a reconstruction every detail, however small, may be important" and accordingly they offer up a wealth of details for the reader to consider in this back and forth tale. All the while, the story builds up to the race -- with Enzo summing up:
Three days of doubt, he thinks will be disentangled in three circuits of the track. It will be the Palio of Revelations, all yet to be run. One will prevail.The Palio and the traditions behind it are complicated, but also central to the story; the race matters, with the villa-inhabitants having a stake in how it unfolds this time around -- and Enzo believing that with its running the complicated and strange pieces might finally fall into place.
Among those present in the villa is the diminutive "famous Puddu, 'king of the jockeys'" -- who has no qualms about being very forward with Valeria (and generally behaving crassly), nibbling at her most inappropriately.
There is a death -- certainly, to Enzo, suspicious -- and something of an investigation, but the Palio overshadows all.
Runaway Horses is also a city novel -- the Piazza del Campo here the heart, but the sweep of the story extending also beyond it, ranging across: "Siena, a city of roofs laid out by a crazed Euclid". Appropriately to the outsiders -- the Maggionis don't have much familiarity with it -- it appears: "A hermetic city. A ciphered city, no less".
The narrative focuses on Enzo and his experiences (with a few flashes of Valeria's as well) -- whereby he remains mystified and unclear about many of the things going on around him, an uncertainty that pervades the text, the reader left feeling very much like him, down to near to the conclusion, where:
In the remaining fifteen, twenty seconds, the lawyer meditates on his average destiny, on the probabilities that a couple like them should have stumbled into such an extraordinary adventure, and he realizes that the figures don't add up, that too many things still fail to persuade him, that the winning revelation is still concealed in the thick of the panting throng, among death and passion and Scattomints and Coca-Cola, among carabinieri, gardeners, ants dishwashers, banners, palaces, ancient customs, X-100 tyres...Fruttero & Lucentini stylishly spin out their tale. This isn't a mystery that proceeds step by easy step towards a resolution, but rather more complex and muddy -- truer to life, even as here the situation is so far from the familiar and normal. But that's also part of the point, Enzo flailingly out of his element (while also fascinated by these odd experiences).
It's an unusual piece of mystery-fiction, but deftly presented -- in all its curious details (and the complexity of the strange Palio).
- M.A.Orthofer, 13 December 2024
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Runaway Horses:
- Bitter Lemon Press publicity page
- Oscar publicity page
- fantasy magazine (Italian)
- giramenti (Italian)
- Liberementi (Italian)
- Mangialibri (Italian)
- Noir Italiano (Italian)
- Offline (Italian)
- Radical Ging (Italian)
- See Index of Mysteries and Thrillers
- See Index of Italian literature
- Other books from Bitter Lemon Press
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Italian authors Carlo Fruttero (1926-2012) and Franco Lucentini (1920-2002) collaborated on numerous popular works of fiction.
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© 2024 the complete review
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