Status Updates From Rome noir

"1988." Quite witty and well written. So the collection begins and ends with a bang but sadly sags quite a bit in the middle.

"Caput Mundi." Well written, truly hard boiled, but kinda fizzled at the end.

"Silence Is Golden." Horrible sexist piece of crap. This is exactly what's most wrong with the Italian male, their mommy complexes, and their violent, childlike self-absorption.

"For a Few..." A complex tale with little payoff, sadly. I assume the title is a reference to the Sergio Leone western but the translator didn't get it.

"Eaten Alive." Another good one! Not exactly noir in the US film sense, but dark indeed--and isolates the real enemy for once. All of the best stories in this collection are by women.

"Remember Me with Kindness." Meh. Was hoping for more from the only non-translated story in the collection.

"Beret." Short and sweet--unexpectedly amusing. Move along, nothing much to see here.

"Christmas Eves." Wow. beautiful. A tiny little gem. Not really noir, per se, but haunting.

"Words, Thought." Finally, another pretty good story. Like Italian pop music again a bit overdone, but I was pretty engrossed. Nice use of crime as a McGuffin to speak of other things: adolescence, first love, the generation gap.

"Tiburtina Noir Blues." Slightly effective, a great idea, but too broad/comic book in execution to be very convincing. Derivative of Psycho, with the same lame epilogue explaining everything in a condescending way.

"Roman Holidays." Rather dull, plodding story in pedestrian language, imagery, concept.

"Don't Talk to the Passenger." Started out really great. The first truly noir story, using the trope of the psychopathic cop. End in a rather racist way though. Bugged me. Italians have a lot to learn about other cultures.

"Last Summer Together" Not bad--but a bit like even the best Italian pop tunes, way over-dramatic.

"The Melting Pot." Not bad in terms of tone but--and this may not be a valid criticism of a story obviously about naivete--I found the narrator unrealistically naive.

"Eternal Rome." As bad as the first story was good--riddled with cliche, more sci fi than noir, with a dumb. "shock" ending.

Opening tale, "Pasolini's Shadow," is amazing! Wonderfully heartfelt, dramatic, poetic. I'm floored. Pasolini's death has cast as long a shadow across literature and film as Byron's affair with Lady Caroline Lamb--the other book I'm reading today--heh heh.

These stories are DARK and the underside of the imagination explored here can make you question the concept of human kindness. Some are more like vignette, others are more plot driven, many will un-nerve! More than I bargained for and enough to make me ration out each story. More like a tin of altoids than a bag of chips.