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Carnevale
Set in the Hudson Valley, beginning in the 1960s, Carnevale is at heart a family saga. The book begins as a memoir of the painter Guido Diamante’s unusual childhood at the Villa Giustovera—a "carnival" of characters and incidents, climaxing with an unforgettable costumed ball at his family’s hotel. When he abandons this project during the economic crisis of 2008 and returns to teaching at the Hudson River College, Guido soon becomes embroiled in a scheme to revive the reputation and market value of his rascal mentor, the painter Leo Declare, recently found drowned in the Hudson. At the same time, a childhood friend invites him to become a police sketch artist, providing Guido with an opportunity to do penance for the misdeeds of his youth, when he worked for Declare and his dubious partner at the Half Moon Café and Saloon. Guido’s labyrinth of memories is steeped in references to the “brave new world” of the sexy, psychedelic 60s, and is colored by his knowledge of Renaissance art, alchemy, and the Tarot. While seeking his own Philosopher’s Stone, Guido is also in search of his runaway cousin Tina, an irresistible beauty possessed of psychic abilities they both have inherited from their grandmother. Is she the key to his contentment?
620 pages, Hardcover
Published October 31, 2019
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November 1, 2019Carnevale (Fomite Press), Peter Fortunato’s debut novel, starts with a craps game and a red and white snake in a mayonnaise jar. But it moves on quickly to art, love, amphibians, the beautiful Gracie Laporta, the bewildering Leo Declare, Renaissance painters, philosophers, Tarot cards, a Ouija board, dreams, voyeurism and Debussy’s Clair de Lune.
No sense in trying to keep track. Characters who seem to disappear return hundreds of pages later. An off-hand reference to an obscure painting turns out to be essential part of the plot. Mischief becomes criminal, and love takes some pretty strange turns. Better to throw your hands up in the air like one does on a roller coaster and go along for the ride.
It’s ostensibly a coming-of-age story about a young Italian-American boy named Guido who grew up on the Diamonte family-owned inn in New York’s Hudson Valley, but it’s so much more. Orbiting Guido are characters so colorful they nearly upstage our hero. Just about the time the reader gets curious about Guido’s questionable interest in his little cousin Tina, we start to suspect a possibly homoerotic relationship between Guido and Leo Declare, who is both his art mentor and his boss at the Half Moon Cafe and Saloon.
Guido falls in lust and love interchangeably while honing his skills as an artist and experimenting with sex, drugs and nudity. He idolizes his cousin Christiano and suspects there is something going on between a handsome gentleman caller and his grandmother Nonna. As a boy, he spies on the grown-ups, then creates his own fantasy world in the meadows beyond the buildings that make up the inn. He toggles between the kitchen at the Inn Giustovera and his busboy duties at the Half Moon just as neatly as he toggles between adolescence and precociousness.
The rest of the review: https://booktrib.com/2019/11/go-on-ca...
No sense in trying to keep track. Characters who seem to disappear return hundreds of pages later. An off-hand reference to an obscure painting turns out to be essential part of the plot. Mischief becomes criminal, and love takes some pretty strange turns. Better to throw your hands up in the air like one does on a roller coaster and go along for the ride.
It’s ostensibly a coming-of-age story about a young Italian-American boy named Guido who grew up on the Diamonte family-owned inn in New York’s Hudson Valley, but it’s so much more. Orbiting Guido are characters so colorful they nearly upstage our hero. Just about the time the reader gets curious about Guido’s questionable interest in his little cousin Tina, we start to suspect a possibly homoerotic relationship between Guido and Leo Declare, who is both his art mentor and his boss at the Half Moon Cafe and Saloon.
Guido falls in lust and love interchangeably while honing his skills as an artist and experimenting with sex, drugs and nudity. He idolizes his cousin Christiano and suspects there is something going on between a handsome gentleman caller and his grandmother Nonna. As a boy, he spies on the grown-ups, then creates his own fantasy world in the meadows beyond the buildings that make up the inn. He toggles between the kitchen at the Inn Giustovera and his busboy duties at the Half Moon just as neatly as he toggles between adolescence and precociousness.
The rest of the review: https://booktrib.com/2019/11/go-on-ca...
May 9, 2020
Peter Fortunato’s debut novel Canevale is a hefty tome that deftly moves between the deep and sometimes hallucinatory musings of the narrator Guido Diamante and clear-eyed story-telling that puts readers into the narrator’s line of vision and allows them to live his tale with him. The novel is structured as a chronicle relating the experiences of a young man growing up in the 1950s and coming of age in the 1960’s, as told by the narrator at middle-age in 2008.
Guido’s personal tale is folded into the story of a family living various versions of the immigrant’s dream. Guido’s grandmother, grandfather, their two lifelong friends from the old country, and his mother and father and aunt, uncle and cousin, embody and live not simply generational dramas, pleasures and disappointments, but also cultural ones. Part of the plot here is Guido’s deciding for himself what it means to be a second-generation Italian in the U.S. in the 1950s.
This quest is further compounded by the mundane but no less remarkable and terrifying experience of an adolescent male meeting his burgeoning sexuality head-on. Guido’s quest for carnal knowledge is the flip side of his artistic admiration of the female form. To earn a living as an adult, he is an adjunct professor of art at a small private college in the Hudson Valley, a role on the margin that elicits musings on the pettiness of academia and the vagaries of the art market.
Other reflections woven around personal dramas include Guido’s interest in the spiritual world. Guido’s fertile imagination as a boy is fed and tormented by the power and the glory of Catholicism, primarily represented by priests and confession. The mystical side of that religion opens onto psychic gifts that Guido shares with his nonna and later his younger cousin Tina. The fervor and passion aroused by these realms are tempered by Guido’s knowledge of Greek mythology and Buddhist teachings. The art inspired by all of these is a constant source of reference for Guido as he makes his way through the labyrinth of his personality and identity as an Italian male and as a moral human being.
The narrative voice offers astute and often humorous observations of an only child of owners of a restaurant-resort in the Hudson Valley and ironic, sometimes desperately honest, reflections of a middle-aged artist-art historian-adjunct professor. Early in the novel he acknowledges that his “story is already written ‘in the aether,’ so to speak—but the process of unfolding it card by card or word by word is something else” (59). This “something else” turns out to be a fluidity of mind that continually captures the reader and arouses empathy and curiosity about this narrator and where his path may be leading him.
In the final sections of the novel, the events revealed in the deep dive into Guido’s past in earlier parts become a source of reference for both Guido and his reader as he continues to evolve and learn about himself as an adult. In the end, Guido’s chronicle of his past and present lives does not pretend to offer a final version of himself. It is simply his arrival at a future. “I am going to publish my book,” he announces at the end. To the delight of his reader, it looks like he did. Where will he go from here? Stay tuned.
Guido’s personal tale is folded into the story of a family living various versions of the immigrant’s dream. Guido’s grandmother, grandfather, their two lifelong friends from the old country, and his mother and father and aunt, uncle and cousin, embody and live not simply generational dramas, pleasures and disappointments, but also cultural ones. Part of the plot here is Guido’s deciding for himself what it means to be a second-generation Italian in the U.S. in the 1950s.
This quest is further compounded by the mundane but no less remarkable and terrifying experience of an adolescent male meeting his burgeoning sexuality head-on. Guido’s quest for carnal knowledge is the flip side of his artistic admiration of the female form. To earn a living as an adult, he is an adjunct professor of art at a small private college in the Hudson Valley, a role on the margin that elicits musings on the pettiness of academia and the vagaries of the art market.
Other reflections woven around personal dramas include Guido’s interest in the spiritual world. Guido’s fertile imagination as a boy is fed and tormented by the power and the glory of Catholicism, primarily represented by priests and confession. The mystical side of that religion opens onto psychic gifts that Guido shares with his nonna and later his younger cousin Tina. The fervor and passion aroused by these realms are tempered by Guido’s knowledge of Greek mythology and Buddhist teachings. The art inspired by all of these is a constant source of reference for Guido as he makes his way through the labyrinth of his personality and identity as an Italian male and as a moral human being.
The narrative voice offers astute and often humorous observations of an only child of owners of a restaurant-resort in the Hudson Valley and ironic, sometimes desperately honest, reflections of a middle-aged artist-art historian-adjunct professor. Early in the novel he acknowledges that his “story is already written ‘in the aether,’ so to speak—but the process of unfolding it card by card or word by word is something else” (59). This “something else” turns out to be a fluidity of mind that continually captures the reader and arouses empathy and curiosity about this narrator and where his path may be leading him.
In the final sections of the novel, the events revealed in the deep dive into Guido’s past in earlier parts become a source of reference for both Guido and his reader as he continues to evolve and learn about himself as an adult. In the end, Guido’s chronicle of his past and present lives does not pretend to offer a final version of himself. It is simply his arrival at a future. “I am going to publish my book,” he announces at the end. To the delight of his reader, it looks like he did. Where will he go from here? Stay tuned.
November 1, 2020
I ended up reading this in spurts over about six weeks. That is not the way to read this picaresque novel. Take a week or so and dig in.
The beginning, as Guido, the main character, grows up in his family’s Italian restaurant, surrounded by uncles, cousins, and grandparents, had me captivated. But as Guido becomes a randy teenage painter, slowed me down. When I picked it up again, Guido’s adventures as a college teacher and police artist again drew me in.
Toward the end, the tale moves around in time in a way both intriguing and confusing.
In general, this is an astonishing work, full of conversations about art and life. I need to read it again.
The beginning, as Guido, the main character, grows up in his family’s Italian restaurant, surrounded by uncles, cousins, and grandparents, had me captivated. But as Guido becomes a randy teenage painter, slowed me down. When I picked it up again, Guido’s adventures as a college teacher and police artist again drew me in.
Toward the end, the tale moves around in time in a way both intriguing and confusing.
In general, this is an astonishing work, full of conversations about art and life. I need to read it again.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews