Thoughts on "A Suitable Boy"

It was quite a different experience for me reading this book. It took me two months or so. I never wanted to skip over so much as a paragraph, but after a few pages I was drowning in words, images, unfamiliar names for people, flowers, trees, clothing, etc. It must be the way a child feels learning a language when things just wash over you. I found that with such a big book to hold that I would sit in a reading chair with good light - I'd get up an hour early in the mornings to read. It was like a total immersion class on India. The author could tie in music, religion, politics, poetry, festivals and people in such a miraculous way. I read that the author's father worked for a shoe company. I also read that he is working on another novel, "A Suitable Girl." You really couldn't make a single movie based on this book. It would have to be a series and cover several seasons. Many many thanks to my friend Dildar Gill Pisani who recommended this book!  (See below)

  

Sal's Grandmother - Stage Name Brunetta

Sal's Grandmother, Amelia Cantalupo Ferrari was a music hall singer in Italy and specialized in declamations and recitations from famous plays and poetry.  She came to San Francisco in 1925 and often appeared at Fugazi Hall in North Beach.

Sal's grandfather Gennarino Cantalupo was a lyricist and pamphleteer, denizen of the street scene in Naples.  He died during the Influenza epidemic of 1920. He liked the nickname of Gennarino Bianchi. 

The youtube video (above) is of Montserrat Caballe doing an excerpt from the opera Adriana Lecouvreur.  In the opera she plays a famous stage actress and singer.  In this piece she is doing a recitation from Racine's Phaedra.  The dramatic reading serves the double purpose of showing off her technique and incidentally insulting a woman at the party setting all sorts of craziness in motion.  This moment reminded me of Sal's grandmother and her dramatic technique.  It was she who got Sal involved in the ragazzi/boys onstage in various operas such as La Boheme and Carmen.

Marching to Lincoln Memorial