Robert Crichton (1) (1925–1993)

A charming but laborious novel, I think Robert Crichton's The Secret of Santa Vittoria attempts but falls short in something that Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, one of my favourite books, would later achieve remarkably. Both are comic epics with a great mass of colourful characters; stories that have, just below their surface, a penalty of violence and death for those characters who err; and the central anima of a great, though unassuming, undertaking that becomes, through the wonderful dove-tailing of various character interactions, the deed of their life.

However, where McMurtry's sweeping Western was larger-than-life, Crichton's wartime farce is often cartoonish and whimsical. Where the 900+ pages of Lonesome Dove were almost dreamlike in their swift pace, the 380 pages of The Secret of Santa Vittoria are often plodding. Crichton's characters can be shallow, for all the attention given to them, where McMurtry's come to life in a single line of dialogue. Where Lonesome Dove's violence feels inevitable, Santa Vittoria's feels reckless. Perhaps most importantly, Lonesome Dove's quest to establish a cattle ranch in Montana feels like the greatest triumph of all the world – in Woodrow Call's phrase, a "hell of a vision". In Santa Vittoria, the efforts of the population of a small Italian town to hide their stores of wine from the Nazis seem quixotic and, eventually, anti-climactic.

It is harsh, perhaps, to compare The Secret of Santa Vittoria to McMurtry's masterpiece, for all books should be judged on their own merits, but I found the parallels occurring to me as I read the book, and illuminating when trying to diagnose Santa Vittoria's points of failure. Without the illustrative comparison to Lonesome Dove I mentioned above, one could still say that Santa Vittoria is often slow in its pacing, cartoonish in its characterisation and redundant in its attempts. I couldn't help but think how fortunate the citizens of Santa Vittoria were that the German commander sent to loot their hidden wine is determined, for no apparent reason, to use the mind rather than the muscle (pg. 272). The Italians bamboozle the Germans, which is fine enough for a while, but eventually they are in clear mockery of the German occupiers, which is unfathomable. Even when more hardened German (and SS) troops arrive, there are only a few instances of coercive torture and one contrived execution. By the end, I was staggered that Captain von Prum's Luger hadn't bore a hole in Bombolini's head – or anyone's. There are some clever schemes in this book, but I was never fully on board with the townspeople's ingenuity, because I knew it was only the author's artifice preventing Santa Vittoria from becoming Oradour-sur-Glane.

With this bewilderment always in mind, it was a struggle for me to engage with the stakes in Crichton's book. If you strain, you can dig out some deeper theme about how the wine represents the life of the town, or life in general, which must be protected at all costs against the death and surrender represented by the Germans. But such is the plodding nature of the story, and its artificial, often whimsical, tone, that it can be hard for such a theme to settle. There's no great movement in the prose or the story, and it drags. This novel is one of those that, while good, you feel it should be better than it is. I kept expecting some note to sound which never came.… (mer)

Lengthy at times but strong arc, the author does his best for character development but there are simply too many characters to go deeper. In some ways the true protagonist is the wine (life) and the antagonist is death. As the people of 1943 Santa Vittoria outwit the Germans (and yes, there are cultural stereotypes) to save their lifeblood, the town’s wine, the author makes the point that to survive is everything: we must each determine the one thing that enables our survival; even if that thing brings death —to our body, to our ideals, or to our expectations—we survive as an individual, and as individuals we survive as a group.… (mer)

This is a story about a remote Italian town in the Second World War. It was so remote that it had no roads linking it to the outside world. Eventually it was occupied by a small German occupying force which was tasked with finding the huge store of wine which was its only product. The town could not give up its life's blood, and this is the tale of how it tried to keep its million bottles a secret.

To begin with I thought this was light weight stuff, but the story grew and acquired weight as it went along.… (mer)