The Girl of His Dreams

The Girl of His Dreams (2008) Donna Leon

The 17th Commissario Brunetti mystery opens with a funeral–Brunetti’s mother has finally died. This isn’t a cruel statement, just a recognition that she wasn’t the woman who raised two sons, but was instead made into a shell of herself by dementia.

The mystery starts when a priest–a friend of Sergio’s who said a prayer at the graveside–comes to ask Brunetti about a religious leader who has come to concern the priest.

In this, he comes to talk to her mother-in-law about religion and faith.

‘I’ve chosen to believe in God, you see, Guido. In the face of convincing evidence to the contrary and in the complete absence of proof – well, anything a right-thinking person would consider as proof – of God’s existence. I find that it makes life more acceptable, and it becomes easier to make certain decisions and endure certain losses. But it’s a choice on my part, only that, and so the other choice, the choice not to believe, is entirely sensible to me.’
‘I’m not sure I see it as a choice,’ Brunetti said.
‘Of course it’s a choice,’ she said with the same smile, as though they were talking about the children, and he’d just repeated one of Chiara’s clever remarks. ‘We’ve both been presented with the same evidence, or lack of evidence, and we each choose to interpret it in a particular way. So of course it’s a choice.’

Slightly different from Paola’s ideas of religion and faith.

Her voice deepened into disgust and she added, ‘It’s all so terribly American.’
‘Why American?’ Nadia asked, reaching for one of the fresh glasses the barman set on the counter.
‘Because they think it’s enough to feel things: they’ve come to believe it’s more important than doing things, or it’s the same thing or, at any rate, deserves just as much credit as actually doing something.

Sadly, I think that the Internet has only made that worse.

It is only later that we have the death–unrelated to the priest–that one expects from a murder mystery.

There are some heartbreaking passages.

In recent years, Brunetti had begun to see the death of the young as the theft of years, decades, generations. Each time he learned of the willed, unnecessary destruction of a young person, whether it was the result of crime or of one of the many futile wars that snuffed out their lives, he counted out the years until they would have been seventy and added up the plundered years of life. His own government had stolen centuries; other governments had stolen millennia, had stamped out the joy these kids might and should have had. Even if life had brought them misery or pain, it would still have brought them life, not the void that Brunetti saw looming after death.

And as always, passages that brought consideration.

Brunetti had often reflected on the meaning of the phrase ‘net worth’, especially as it was used in an attempt to calculate the wealth of a person. It usually included their investments, homes, bank accounts, possessions: only those things which could be seen, touched, counted. Never considered, as far as he could tell, were such intangibles as the good or ill will which followed a person through life, the love he gave or the love which was felt for him, nor, important in this instance, the favours he was owed.

A lot happens in this book, and I like that there are multiple threads occurring in Brunetti’s life, but as often happens, don’t expect those who do evil to necessarily get their comeuppance.
Rating: 7/10

Published by Atlantic Monthly Press

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