Hunting Season: A Novel
By: Andrea Camilleri / Narrated By: Grover Gardner
Length: 4 hrs and 18 mins
Good cow—Got taken in by the cute cover and the danged Publisher’s Summary!
I know I know, what the heck am I doing reading a Publisher’s Summary when I’ve railed against them in review after review?!
It’s like this, see: There was a massive sale on Kobo, and the flipping cover enCHANted me. Add that the PS says this is a quirky mystery (And me over here starting to get into Mysteries!), and dude! I couldn’t chuck the 3.45 or 4.45 or however much it was at Kobo fast enough (By the way? A warning with Kobo: Decent prices on sales, but once in the app and to be downloaded one discovers that the audiobook files are MASSIVE!!! Who on earth has the storage space for some of them?!).
And here I’m doing a week where most of the chosen audiobooks had a magical realism bent to them? Oh gosh, how thrilled I was to add that wide-eyed man on the cover to the Listening to Now foursome on the graphic.
And then I had a brief chat with my sister, and she said she haaaaated it. Uh-oh, sayeth I to myself. But I approached it with an open mind, citing all the negative hoopla surrounding American Dirt and choosing to judge for myself how that one turned out. I do NOT like pre-judging, probably as much as I haaaate and will NEVER NOT finish an audiobook before reviewing it.
All right, that said, lemme add that I, yes, I understand, love Regency Romances where back in the day poor young women were thrust into the marriage mart and bartered to the highest bidder. Awful, yes. And all they came with, every shilling they had to their names was promptly turned over to the new husband. Booooo, awful! But lemme say in my defense that the romances I love are where a love match develops, where there’s real respect and affection…
Why do I tell you this?
Welllll, because I found this book, Hunting Season, to be dePLORable, to be soooo demeaning to women, to be even offensive (Dude, author Andrea Camilleri lost me when a young man dies after schtupping a goat. Yessss, he loves the goat, but seriously, I could NOT see the goat loving him back). Add to that early on a wife suffering the continual brutish attentions of her husband as he seeks to bring forth a male heir, as she silently agonizes beneath him (And I should say here that there are PLENTY of different positions for the act of copulation as ‘twould appear that Camilleri thought it’d be suuuuuuch fun to have each and every character banging around the place).
Now, after that son dies, the grand papa Don Filippo sees that his wife has lost her mind with grief, so he takes it upon himself to begin copulating with another woman who is shared out between men. The plan is to impregnate her (As tho’ a son would be guaranteed… by the way, Don Filippo already has a daughter, but she’s not good enough, as women are basically chattel), and then he’ll come in like some grand Samaritan and adopt the child.
Okay so, like, I reeeeeally enjoyed Napoleon’s Rosebud, and THAT one I considered to be bawdier than all get-out. -BUT- The women were clever in that one, and they were wily. THIS book? Just vulgar and demeaning. I know I know, I’m knooooown for my prudish sensibilities, for the fact that my toes curl with the slightest bit of physical affection and groping going on, but I gotta tell ya that at no point did my toes curl, even considering the perpetual fornication going on. Rather, I felt my gorge rise. Yeh yeh yeh, plenty of the women within this story LIKE sex and leer and cast come-hither glances, so it’s not like there was rampant rape going on (Except for the goat…), it’s just that there was an obsession on Camilleri’s part with the act of procreating. Not delightful, I must say.
What’s the story? Newcomer comes to an 1880’s Italian village and sets up shop as a pharmacist, and he offers remedies to many of the townsfolk, most notably the family of Don Filippo—they’ve been hit by a run of truly bad luck whereby members of the family are dropping like flies. Whodunnit, or is there any whodunnit at all?
And that’s it…
Grover Gardner does what he can, and his super duper nasal-tones aaaaaalmost make the goat scene smile-worthy, but don’t. Plus, I just read an article about narrators doing other cultures, adopting accents, and Gardner was interviewed. He said a LOT of work he’s done? He wouldn’t do again as he admits that some of the characters he portrayed came off as stereotypes. I kinda sorta think a biiiiiit of that might be the case here, even tho’ this was released as an audiobook in the 21st century as opposed to the 1990s when it was first written/published. But it really hasn’t been since Spring/Summer 2020 that we as a society have started to get serious about not doing bonehead things. What I’m saying is that, while Grover Gardner does his usual impeccable job, I DID wonder about the voice choices. And besides which, dude, once past the initial jolt of and itty bitty bit o’ amusement? A goat is violated!
Come for the really awesome cover, have your interest piqued by the Publisher’s Summary, and then check out this review. At which point?
Run, run like the wind towards something that is NOT a waste of precious time. Why, I coulda been petting a cat!
Or picking at navel lint… 4 hours listening time? I would’ve FOUND that much lint to pick!!!
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