Although the Swedish Henning Mankell is known by his thrillers and his Inspector Wallander series that takes even now on Arte. They had also followed this author prolific and eclectic (he wrote the theater, he writes about Africa, ...) with a social novel about immigration in Sweden it was Tea-Bag (which can be found elsewhere track here!. Here it is again with something other than a police officer: Italian shoes, certainly his best novel to date and, just as surely, one of the best books across all rays, we have read in recent months. We would like to see adapted a movie, not because the script but because the images are evoked with uncommon strength and it takes only a few lines to Mankell to plunge us into the heart of the Swedish winter alongside Fredrik Welin this. A guy who is slowly but surely on its 70, who lives secluded on one of the islands of the Swedish archipelago with an anthill which gradually invades his living room, a guy who snife a tar pot in his boathouse when it really goes wrong, a guy who takes a decidedly insignificant logbook where he speaks only time and the wind, and every morning digs a hole in the ice to immerse in ice water as if to convince himself that he is still alive and it's colder outside than his head or his heart. It survives well, tapped by his past: a childhood sweetheart he cowardly fled without explanation and professional error while he was surgeon. A beautiful winter day, hobbling on the ice that leads to his island riddled with cancer, arises Harriet his ex-girlfriend ... From the first pages you feel like standing there with a superb novel sober writing that hits every time, which affects all pages. It smells humanity, true life. If style, time, and weather countries are very different, there has regained some of the evocative power of John Fante, humor and less, and the sense of falling in the corner of a paragraph to go right the heart, to the point. As a kick in the anthill, the arrival of Harriet will shake life anesthetized until the surgeon: the stories and women of the past will invade the island hermit heart. As for Italian shoes, one little touch of color and optimistic, as moved in this very true story but not very cheerful, they let you find out what they are doing in the snowy forests of Scandinavia. And always without giving too much away to not spoil the pleasure of reading, note that Dr. Welin and Inspector Wallander share some of the same difficulties in their family relationships ... Then let those who do not yet know Mankell or who does know that his thrillers, rush on this excellent novel. The very beautiful literature.
