Huyendo de una de las peores epidemias de peste que asolan Europa, una desvencijada carreta cargada de pociones y ungüentos milagrosos atraviesa los campos de Umbría durante la primavera de 1348. Giuseppe Pagamino, veterano embaucador, herborista y saqueador de tumbas, recala en Florencia, que más que la metrópoli tan cantada de otras épocas se le aparece como una ciudad vacía y maloliente. Allí, en una casa señorial abandonada, descubre a Arturo, un jovenzuelo a quien no duda en reclutar como ayudante y discípulo. Juntos encaminarán sus pasos hacia Lucca, donde Maese Giuseppe espera hacer realidad su sueño más preciado: conseguir el elixir de la inmortalidad. Sin embargo, los planesde Giuseppe toparán con el obispo y sus esbirros, que lo acusarán de brujería y lo encerrarán en una mazmorra. Ante tan comprometida situación, para volver a su vida errante y aventurera, donde le espera un sinfín de episodios rocambolescos en compañía del fiel Arturo, el pícaro herborista deberá hacer gala de su formidable capacidad para sacar el mejor partido de las circunstancias más adversas.

Løgnhalsen fra Umbrien "The liar from Umbria" tells the story of Giuseppe Pagamino, a snake oil salesman glibly lying, conning and grave-robbing his way through a fractured 14th-Century northern Italy. The main plotline of the novel is Giuseppe’s quest for the final ingredients for a concoction that will grant him immortality, but he gets distracted along the way by, among other things, hiring a young apprentice, running away from the Inquisition, and looking after a baby left to drown in a river. Occasionally, other characters step into the foreground, but their contribution to the story is fairly limited.

I found this book a disappointment: Reuter clearly set out to write a picaresque novel, comedic and deliberately unfocused, but in my opinion he failed in two respects.

Firstly, for a picaresque novel that intentionally deviates from its main plot for most of the book, there is precious little to do for the main characters. Many of the side plots involve the main characters trying to find temporary comfort and wealth before Providence or a villain interferes, or traipsing along some road on their way to the next (sub-)plot point; consequently, they are terribly boring -- there’s hardly any action or extended scenes of Giuseppe plying his criminal trades. Also, while the scrapes the main characters get involved in are random, featureless and impactless -- precisely as they should be -- Reuter devotes too many pages to the episodes, which makes them ponderous and overwritten, rather than snappy and light-footed. It’s also unfortunate that the deviations and the distractions hardly ever involve multiple or even interesting characters, and while it is heavily implied that a few of the episodes are relevant to the main plot, they turn out to be only minimally so. A few episodes introduce characters as though they will continue to show up and impact later events, but they are then conveniently dropped -- usually by dying offscreen.

Secondly, for a picaresque book, there is very little in the way of comedy here. Part of that I attribute to the setting: I simply do not expect a medieval society that routinely mocks disabled and disfigured people to adhere to 21st-century Western sensitivities, and so some of the attempts at humour fall flat, or read as world-building rather than comedy. In addition, Reuter has inexplicably toned down his dry wit, his sense for the absurd, and his political incorrectness. It’s as though he set out to write a semi-serious historical novel, but why he thought to do that with a tale about an inveterate con-man running afoul of the social and religious establishment, I don’t know.

In short: I was mildly amused and intermittently entertained by this book, but ultimately it is too serious, too long, and too laborious for its own good. ( )

Giuseppe Pagamino fra Umbrien er en løgnhals og historiefortæller. Det redder ham gang på gang fra inkvisitionens klør, da han 1349 rejser til Lucca i Italien for at finde det evige liv. En blændende velskrevet roman om en plattenslager og antihelt, som man knuselsker fra første side.

En FED læseoplevelse ( )