Angelo Petrella
La città perfetta

In my opinion, this book stings more than Gomorra. It's a novel born of fantasy but not too much. It's life sketched with brushes of different tips (sometimes very thin, sometimes large and thick) dipped in black color. But it's life. There are plot twists (as many as you like), a certain dramatization of the characters, and also a Naples that you don't see. Perhaps for this reason, you feel it even more. Because you have to know it well to feel even more inside the book (which, to be fair, has a map of the city divided by neighborhoods on the II and III back covers).

As far as I know, this is Angelo Petrella's first great test over a long distance. Previously, the young (31) and talented Neapolitan writer had produced two genre essay stories (I think I can define them as such, por)noir, which struck me very positively. Nazi Paradise and especially Cane Rabbioso gave me quite a jolt. Cane Rabbioso is fantastic. About fifty pages for the tale of a night of an incredibly high cop who has to resolve a nasty mess. "On the verge of being publishable" was the response I got at the bookstore when I asked "Tonight I want to read something immoral.". And indeed it was so (and to think I was about to pick a - albeit very valid - Taibo!).

The Perfect City invades the territory of Italian noir literature, digging new deeper foundations that shake the structures previously set up by heavyweight writers (see Carlotto) who, in my opinion, have been disappointing a lot lately. Petrella is different. Petrella knows well the streets he describes. Petrella is Neapolitan and has stories to tell us where the characters may be the usual ones, but what they do is not usual. Due to the naturalness (absolutely realistic) with which they do it. Here, in my opinion, the line between dramatization and reality is truly imperceptible. Anyone who knows Naples even a little knows this. That's why Petrella writes without compromises. He knows his genre well, has studied it, analyzed it, and thoroughly explored it. Now he returns it to us in a genuine Neapolitan sauce.

There are three protagonists, and many lives intertwine in a Naples where underground and overground live on the same level, where the crime escalations live absolutely at ease, perfectly immersed in the laws of chaos. In Naples, there are also families, but the leader can easily become someone who wakes up one morning and decides to wipe out a dome for inter, even though he's a son of the vasci. Without getting lost in sophisms, these 500 pages show us things that (like in Gomorra) many already know. It's just that they are told divinely. In order:

> you will see and understand how a boy born in the worst corner of the Quarters, in the most anonymous squalor made of social and family disruption, can become a Camorra boss.

> you can meet the archetype corrupt cop (this character has a lot of Cane Rabbioso that I mentioned before), in his own pornographic way, perpetually twitchy, greedy for bodily fluids, who manages to have two parallel careers.

> you can scrutinize the perhaps more common life of a teenage comrade who, through a series of adventures, finds himself becoming a young proletarian terrorist.

Lives that wander around Naples and its outskirts between the Stadio S. Paolo, the Vesuvius area, the Spanish Quarters, and the (especially once, long ago) wonderful Portici area. The first character on the list is Sanguetta, someone we not born where he was born would define a perfect ignorant thug. It's a matter of socialization, I would say. Sanguetta is a son of his slum and lives according to those rules, rules that may be incomprehensible to many but which we should at least learn to know, as they really exist. If you step out of the book and enter Naples, you will find no differences. For him, it's the only way to live. His climb is spectacular. His determination too. He's a typical example of a person who has nothing to lose by default. So he faces risks with cold blood, with underlying cunning. The character is perfect, also because he suffers the presence of "normal" people around him, freaking out when kept on a tight leash. Kudos to the author for choosing to have the story told by its protagonists in the first person, which was certainly a great choice. Sanguetta is effectively the only paradox among the three. He would never speak Italian, and the Neapolitanization of Dante's language seems a bit forced but right in the interjections and idioms. Some words I don't think would be in that character's mouth because they are too "sophisticated," but I'm talking about a few words that, in 500 pages, can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

The second character on the list is l'Americano, the cop we all would like to kick his ass. However, the odds of an ass-kicking happening are all in his favor. He has no scruples about anything, from jerking off to the photos of a well-known Italian politician to the most gruesome torture, including stadium charges. His language is obsessive and neurotic, he is intelligent and decisive: the perfect consummate cokehead. He makes the most important decisions under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol, demonstrating a clarity and cold blood equal to those of Sanguetta. Two animals who know how to navigate their zoo alone. And Naples seems to be quite a bestiary. There's a lot of cop drama in l'Americano, and a lot of toughness.

Chimicone, the third man on the list of protagonists, is a repetitive pothead, and from a teenager accustomed to large demonstrations and occupations, he will transform into a ruthless terrorist. Emotionally, he is the most evolved character of the three. His sensitivity and his love for a girl will lead him to commit the typical stupidities one can commit for these reasons. Intrigues from which he will emerge with the same determination as the other two. His way of speaking is almost perfect: Chimicone's words alone dress the character. Well done, Petrella.

Around the 3 protagonists moves a roster of exceptional second-line characters including mobsters, students, parents, cops, principals, lawyers, transvestites, etc. All psychologies outlined with incisiveness and language by Petrella. These - often fleeting - appearances remain so impressed that if you happen to fall asleep one evening and stop reading, 3 days later, as soon as you open the book, you see the character again and start from there. Alongside the second lines, there's an undergrowth of additional characters that enrich the stories and help support a complex plot where nothing is expected and which flows smoothly for 500 pages that, in reality, fly by like the little more than 50 of Cane Rabbioso.

I'm not talking about the plot because it would damage those who haven't read the book. I'd like to conclude this review, perhaps written a little too hasty, but with passion, by making a point about Petrella and what he has produced so far. The Perfect City is the first step toward the maturation of a great Italian pen. The admirers will think so. I believe that this touch of rawness of a first work in the "break everything with class" style will make this novel his most memorable. This is a bold conclusion, I realize, but noir, in my opinion, is the fruit of strategy without calculations. It's hard for a writer to maintain that. This is the challenge, if ever, for Petrella: make few calculations and let us have fun again sweating nights to understand how to keep together the messes he creates himself, without the obsession of the publisher and money.

This novel marks a step forward compared to the stories because it combines the intents and the atmospheres that pervade them, shaping characters and situations that perhaps were too extreme before (and for this reason still very enjoyable). Then I think again, and I believe that those protagonists' work is a real epic, a succession of very hard and extremely difficult events. A sort of Iliad (with all due proportions). Will our author someday be able to pull off an equally enjoyable Odyssey?