Why this book: Recommened to me by several credible friends.  Also, having read >>>>Continie which also takes place in Northern Italy,  and now  that I have hiked 3 times in the Dolomites, where much of this novel takes place, I was intrigued.  

Summary in 3 Sentences:  The novel is written as a retropsective by the protagonist Alessandro Guiliani a man in his 70s looking back from the 1960s on his life in the early part of the 20th century as he describes it to a young Italian companion that is accompanying him on a long walk. The book begins with that 1960s setting, then moves on to Alessandro’s youth and growing up in early 20th century Italy, then his many experiences during and immediately after WW1 

My Impressions:   Not a book for someone in a hurry, but is impressive for a thoughtful person with patience and eclectic interests, and a willingness to engage in a long rich story. It is not for someone looking for a page turner and a lot of action.  But as a whole it can be very satisfying, although for as I read it, I was a  occasionally frustrated and impatient trying to understand the arc of the story. But I chose to stick with it, with Alessandro and his journey, and I’m glad I did.

It reads more like the Odyssey of an Italian Soldier in the Great War.  It begins with our protagonist Alessandro Giuliani as an old man of 74 (not THAT old!) in the early 1960s connecting with Nicolo Sambuca, a young uneducated working class man of about 18, after the two of them miss the bus to a town in the mountains outside of Rome.  Alessandro is clearly a wise, tough, worldly, educated man of  wide  and experience.  Since they are heading to the same general location, he convinces Nicolo to walk  together with him to their next destination,  though it would be a hike of more than 20 hours overnight through the mountains.  In the course of that hike, Alessandro tells of his life nearly 50 years ago to Nicolo, which helps us not only to understand how Alessandro became the wise tough old man that he is, but also tells us a lot about Italy in the early part of the 20th century.  His experiences during WW1 which make up the majority of the book, reveal much about the insanity and brutality, death and suffering resulting from of how the Italians fought the Austrians in WW1.  And indeed Alessandro had experienced a multitude of different aspects and dimensions of WW1 in Italy’s battles with Austria during WW1.

His experiences came in episodes, reminding me of Odysseus return to Greece after the Trojan War.  The “Odyssey” of  Alessandro’s story, proceeded as such:

• Alessandro’s tells the story of his youth – as the son of a well-to-do attorney in Rome, hunting, mountain and rock climbing in the Dolomies, and studying philosophy, art and aesthetics at the University.  Then the war breaks out and against the wishes of his parents, he believes it his duty to enlist and play his part.
• He goes through boot camp and finds himself on the north western front in Italy in WW1- style trench warfare with the Austrians – lobbing artillery shells at each other across a river valley.  Eventually the Austrians charge and take the Italian positon.
• He survives that battle and finds himself selected to be part of a secret group the Italian government has commissioned to train and then covertly take a large craft around the heel of Italy to Sicily to find, capture and bring to justice deserters who had escaped to and were living in the mountains. They arrive in Sicily, secretly train in a remote location,  and then embark on operations which result in the capture of a number of deserters to bring back to Italy for summary  trial and execution.
• During the return transit, there is some turmoil on the boat, the deserters are able to kill the senior Italian officer and escape over the side near the coast of Italy to swim ashore. Alessandro joins the deserters himself, swims ashore on hid oen, joins some shepherds, and with them,  returns to Rome and his family. There he is himself eventually captured as a deserter,  sent to the notorious Stella Maris prison where deserters are summarily tried and executed.
• A friend of his father’s intervenes to commute his sentence, just before Alessandro was to face a firing squad with his fellow deserters from the Sicily campaign.  He is then sent to a work camp quarry where he engages in hard physical labor with other prisoners  working 16+ hours a day, mining marble appropriately enough, to be made into headstones for the graves of fallen solders.
• He then finds himself sent to another infantry company, again to fight the Austrians, this time in the Dolomites in the northeast of Italy, where again, the Austrians and the Italians face each other over a big mountain valley. He is wounded in one of the battles, and while in the hospital, falls in love with his nurse and while he is recovering, the two have an idyllic romantic relationship until he is sent back to his unit. As his unit is marching off to serve on a different front in the Dolomites, Alessandro witnesses an air attack on the hospital where where his nurse lover was still working, and the hospital is completely destroyed – and he is certain his lover is killed as well.
• The next phase of the Odyssey is in the extremely mountainous section of the Dolomites, where Alessandro, as an experienced former mountaineer and climber, is tasked with manning an observation outpost at the top of a cliff,  accessible only by technical rock climbing.   From this observation post, high above the valley,  he can see into the Austrian lines and report what he observes by a long land line to his unit’s leadership in the valley. He is to be there for a month but toward the end of his window, he fends off and is almost killed in an Austrian attack on his position and he is able to rejoin his unit.
• Next on the Odyssey, he disobeys orders from his unit commander, and goes into the mountains to recover the body of his close friend who’d been wounded and left for dead on a perilous  reconnaissance mission.  He recovers his friend’s body but is then captured by the Austrians and becomes theier prisoner.  They turn him  over to their primitive Bulgarian allies who take him away from Italy to the north. Our still distraught Alessandro observes the brutality and idiocy of his captors, and even though he is far from friendly lines and escapees are summarily shot, he figures he has nothing left to lose,  so escapes again, deep in enemy territory without much hope for success.
• Which leads to the next phase – he is recovered and recaptured by an Austrian unit, whose leader is an educated and sophisticated Austrian Prince, who recognizes Alessandro for the intelligent educated man he is, treats him with respect and assigns him work appropriate to his talents.  Alessandro travels with and become a friend and confidant of this Austrian prince until he is delivered to an Austrian PoW camp in Vienna toward the end of the war.  
• Then begins the next phase of the Odyssey – a whole new adventure – Alessandro working as slave labor in the Austrian royal castle with other PoWs, serving the aristocrats and royalty of Austria.   While there  the armistice is signed, BUT negotiations for return of prisoners drag on, weeks become months, while he and the other prisoners continue to work as  slaves.   And so our hero escapes again, and is able to assume an identity of an Austrian allied soldier, finds his way back to Germany on a quest to find and kill the pilot who bombed the hospital where he’d been a patient and the woman he loved worked. 
• His war concludes with him hiking over the Alps from Germany into Italy, avoiding Germans, Austrians, civilization, on a several day harrowing journey in which he almost dies of exposure and other dangers of the mountains, before he reaches Italy, to begin his new life.
• Back in civilization Alessandro is uninterested in re-integrating and picking up where he left off.  His parents have died, his sister assumed he was dead and emigrated to America, and most of his friends have been killed in the war.  Alessandro is withdrawn, suffering what today we would call PTSD, chooses to work at manual labor and be left alone.  He pines for the nurse he’d met in the Dolomites and through dreams and other signs, becomes convinced that in fact she is still alive.
• For several years, he survives in obscurity by performing gardening and other manual labor.   Through a series of coincidences driven by his own intuition, he finds and reunites with his lover from the Dolomites who has a son – his son..  Unbeknownst to him she was pregnant when he they last saw each other. At this point he is about 27 years old.

At this point, Alessandro’s  WW1 narrative concludes and we return to him telling his story to Nicolo as they walk through the mountains. In this section, Nicolo asks questions and makes comments and we get to know Alessandro again as the wise, tough, compassionate old man we had met at the beginning of the novel.  Here Helprin allows Alessandro to share his life philosophy and his spiritual beliefs in response to Nicolo’s questions and we get to know not only the fascinating man Alessandro, but also the fascinating man Mark Helprin.

It seemed that Helprin was writing an almost Forrest Gump-like approach to describing Italy in the early part of the 20th century, in that Alessandro plays a part in so many different settings in Italy’s participation in WW1.  We also see the Italian Army in its rather inept approach to fighting a relatively sophisticated European Army.  I had previously read The Sardinian Brigade (my review here) which gave one officer’s more detailed personal account of the incompetence of the Italian army leadership in that war. 

But I think another of Helprin’s key objectives was in creating the character of Alessandro – an ideal of manhood in the author’s eyes –  a Nietzschean Ubermensh dealing with the horrors and absurdities of war with courage, principle, detachment and wisdom.. The character of Alessandro himself was from my perspective, as important a theme of this book as was Italy, or WW1.

Alessandro was bold and independent, intelligent and well educated in the classics, with specialty in aesthetics and philosophy. He was passionate and principled, not afraid to commit himself and take a stand. Though he acted primarily on principle, he could be prudent when it made sense, and followed orders and “played the game.”  He was compassionate even/especially when it didn’t serve him well.  He took bold action, took suffering in stride and accepted the consequences of his actions. He didn’t consider himself in any way entitled to any special treatment because of his family, education, courage or intellect.  He was honest and unpretentious.  He didn’t enjoy killing and refrained from it when he could, often at the last moment when his conscience grabbed him.  He was unimpressed with and uninterested in rank, status, wealth and the fineries of the elite, but he could play their game when it served his goals –  independence and freedom for himself and others.  He could love and he did; he could suffer, and he did;  and what did not kill him, made him stronger (and he almost and should have died many times.)   He did not seek, but did not fear death. At the end he is a physically, mentally and spiritually strong old man who appreciates the beauty of nature, the world, of life. 

In his recounting, Alessandro repeatedly refers to himself as a soldier at heart, and reminds us constantly how the war and his experiences as a soldier shaped him as a man, and improved who he was.

We get to know Alessandro through his life as he relates it to Nicolo, and how he reflects on it at the end. This is when  we get to know him best, when as an old man, he tells his story to Nicolo and is responding to Nicolo’s questions.  We see his spiritual side more explicitly at the end, though he is explicitly not religious.  We see the acquired wisdom, strength, passion and detachment of a man who has lived well and fully, toward the end of his life.   He embodies the old saying “living well is the best revenge” against all the misfortunes and near-misses he’d experienced.   I think that was as much Helprin’s message as the story of Italy in the Great War.  And in listening to several interviews on youtube with Helprin, Alessandro reflects Helprin’s own values and ideals for himself.  

For those interested, a good summary which makes some interesting points that I don’t above  can be read at:https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/literature-and-writing/soldier-great-war-mark-helprin