Review: Solitaria, Genni Gunn

Title: Solitaria
Author: Genni Gunn
Length: 250 pages
Format: Paperback
Genre: Fiction; Literary, Multigenerational, Mystery
Publisher: Signature Editions / 2010
Cover Design: Doowah Designs
Source: Library
Rating: ✮✮✮✮

Reason to Read: I take on the annual challenge to read through the entire Scotiabank Giller Prize Longlist—and Solitaria was among those illustrious titles in 2011.

***

"He was the stranger they feared and wanted to become. He was their black sheep, the disgraced one, their brother, their hero." (95)

"We are a family of thwarted desires." (145)

To protect familial honour, the truth can be buried—but one must know that secrets never die. When a demolition crew unearths Vito Santoro's remains at an Italian seaside villa, his sister Piera locks her door against the accusations and anger of her extended family. Following Vito's disappearance fifty years earlier, Piera insisted she received regular correspondence from her eldest brother after he settled in Argentina. His former wife, Teresa, was left to raise their infant son, Marco, under Piera's iron rule without knowing that Vito was, in fact, dead. As forensics teams investigate Vito's mysterious death, the five remaining Santoro siblings and Teresa demand answers from Piera; however, the self-proclaimed matriarch will only open her door to her Canadian-born nephew, David, who she entrusts with a scrapbook detailing her youth and the circumstances leading up to Vito's disappearance.

But the Santoros are rife with their own resentments, conflicting desires, and bitter feuds—at times, her siblings' stories undercut and complicate Piera's narrative to the point where no one can be trusted. David, as an outsider and an academic, possesses the tools needed to uncover the unnamed familial shame strangling his family, but the cost proves higher than anticipated…

photo source

Genni Gunn's Solitaria marked an excellent addition to the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize Longlist for its complex tussling over family honour and personal sacrifice, its staggering portrayals of guilt/shame shared between siblings, and its poetic exploration of a multigenerational mystery within a gorgeous Italian landscape. I do love it when narrators are unreliable and, in the case of Piera and her siblings, the reader learns that each tale contains mere shards of the truth, and that a storyteller does little more than reflect their own biases concerning the past.

Gunn whisks the reader back to the Italy of the 1940s to lay the groundwork of the Santoros' eventual dissolution and captures the dangerous influence of fascist thought on small town lives in addition to the harsh realities of rural poverty in great detail. As well, Gunn deals with difficult subject matter and "trespasses of the blood" with impressive care, especially when it comes to the final revelation that will unravel an extended family network. She splices the distant past with David's current quest to uncover his family's dark history, and she adds a nice bit of drama with the real-life crime program Chi L'Ha Visto ("Who Has Seen Him?")—David's mother, Clarissa, is a world-renowned opera diva whose return to Belisolano causes enough of a stir without adding an unsolved murder to the mix. Public spectacle  and private accountability blend well in this case and introduces a new layer of tension to the family dynamic.

Gunn offers a well-crafted literary mystery populated with deceptive, complex characters circling around an explosive revelation that will keep readers riveted until the last page.

Ideal for: Mystery readers who like a clean shot of the literary in their fiction; Folks looking for a captivating, poetic Canadian novel; Readers who love a gorgeous Italian backdrop; Kids keen on cruising through the 2011 Giller Prize Longlist.