Il Custode
by Niccolò Ammaniti
Niccolò Ammaniti first emerged on the literary scene as one of the “Cannibals”, a group of young Italian authors whose work was featured in the anthology Gioventù Cannibale, a collection that brought into focus the darker, more violent underbelly of Il Bel Paese. This fascination with hard-hitting contemporary themes – organised crime, violence and drug use among them – has remained a defining thread throughout his subsequent fiction, including Io Non Ho Paura (2001) and Come Dio Comanda (2006), both adapted for the screen by Gabriele Salvatores, and Io e Te (2010), which was later filmed by Bernardo Bertolucci.
Yet other elements are equally characteristic of Ammaniti's fiction. His novels frequently contain a coming-of-age dimension; he is adept at appropriating the conventions of genre fiction for his own purposes (as in the dystopian, near-future world of Anna), and he often deploys a distinctly grotesque strain of dark humour.
All these tendencies converge in his latest novel, Il Custode, recently published by Einaudi. Its protagonist is Nilo Vasciaveo, a thirteen-year-old boy who, following the mysterious death of his father, lives with his mother and aunt in a small seaside village in Sicily. Nilo is living the throes of first love and, like most adolescents, dreams of escaping the confines of an otherwise uneventful existence. Yet, as his mother repeatedly reminds him, that is not an option. His family, it turns out, has inherited a peculiar responsibility: they are the custodians of a creature confined to the bathroom of their modest home.
It is at this point that the novel takes a decidedly weird turn. For despite the raw realism that otherwise grounds the narrative, Il Custode is also a work of speculative fiction, which draws heavily on Greek mythology. It would be churlish to reveal much more (the book's cover gives a hint...), but the fusion of a recognisably contemporary setting with an ancient myth proves an intriguing experiment and gives the novel much of its distinctive appeal.
Whether the ending fully justifies the premise is another matter. As in Che la festa cominci, his 2009 novel, Ammaniti pulls out all the stops in the closing chapters, steering the narrative towards a grotesque and increasingly over-the-top denouement.
At fewer than 200 pages, Il Custode is a brisk
read that never outstays its welcome. Its central conceit is imaginative and
engaging, and even if the execution might not entirely live up to the promise
of the premise, it remains a compelling addition to Ammaniti's body of work.
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