Alone and Unobserved

As a follow-up to the French novel I just finished—and in reaction to the Italian Mormon mission reunion I went to month ago where I couldn’t speak a word of Italian—I’m now reading an Italian mystery novel, La forma dell’acqua (“The Shape of Water”) by Andrea Camilleri. The story is set in a small town in Sicily and is written in a bizarre mixture of Italian and Sicilian, and so far it’s pretty good. It’s kinda gross and sexy and dark, and my main reaction to it is amazement that I understand gross, sexy, dark Italian/Sicilian. You wouldn’t think my pure-as-snow Mormon missionary vocabulary could handle it, but you would be wrong. (I blame all the books on Mafia slayings I read on the sly.)