I wanted to like this novel, I really did. I even tried to like it. Sabatini’s first book, a collection of linked short stories called The One With the News, was this amazingly nuanced examination of emotional complexity in a time of family trauma, and might be one of the best things ever published by The Porcupine’s Quill (ugly cover and all—though really, it wouldn’t be a PQ book be without a cover so ugly it could scare small children). Her second collection, The Dolphins at Sainte-Marie, was equally well-crafted, solidifying Sabatini as a disciple of Alice Munro. I learned several years ago, when Sabatini came to do a reading in Sudbury (not the first time we’d met), that she was planning to write a novel based very loosely on her grandfather’s experiences during the Second World War. Though I have no clue how much of her grandfather’s life remains in it, Dante’s War is clearly that novel. And with Dante’s War, Sabatini has achieved something that only a Canadian writer could do: she’s written a World War Two novel with no conflict.
Okay, that was an exaggeration. There is conflict in the novel, but it seems mostly incidental and has little to do with driving the narrative. Query: when a novel is driven by something other than conflict (be it internal, external, whatever), where does it go? Answer: nowhere. Dante and Angelina are two Italian youngsters growing up between the wars in separate, smallish communities. Dante has an abusive father, and Angelina is harassed by a bitter old crone who probably killed her husband. Dante has an extremely loyal best friend to lean on, and a hermit for spiritual guidance. Angelina has an extremely intelligent and loyal dog for a best friend, and a wise priest for spiritual guidance. They meet in Rome just before Dante is shipped off to join the war effort, fall quietly in love, and spend the next few years writing to each other until Dante comes home and they get married. The end. So here’s where you’d probably think things along the lines of “I bet they had a lot of difficulty with the separation, right? There was heartbreak and temptation and whatever, right?” Nope. They’re both super-faithful, and though clearly lonely, they always seem to put those thoughts quickly from their minds so they can get on with the gardening or the fixing of airplanes or whatever. No real despair, no sexual frustration, nothing. (I’ve been in three long-distance relationships, some lasting for years—or two, I guess, since the third one was just the second one replayed a few years later—and there’s very little that’s genuine about how they cope with that aspect, if my experiences are any kind of indicator.) Now you’re probably wondering “okay, but it was the war. I bet Dante was in constant danger and always fighting and such, right?” It makes sense that you might think that, but you’d be wrong. Dante spends most of the war fixing dive bombers far from the front lines, and though rationing is tight and the weather sucks, he’s in no real danger for the bulk of the novel. When Dante does eventually see combat in North Africa, the facts of the battles and his near starvation are rendered so matter-of-factly, so free from suspense or drama, that it’s impossible to believe that he won’t come through it in one piece. His best friend Sabino ate a bullet near the end, but if you were paying attention in the opening pages, you already knew that was going to happen. “Okay, okay. But what about back in San Placido, where Angelina was. I bet there was tight rationing, and I know there were Nazi soldiers all over Italy during the war. Those weren’t fun guys to have around. I bet Angelina was in constant danger!” Yeah, not really. It wasn’t until near the very end of the war that San Placido started to feel the pinch, since they were too poor and remote a community to really bother with, and the Nazi soldiers were more of a nuisance than anything else for the better part of the war. There was this one soldier who was harassing Angelina, but we’d been told through the whole novel how she can toss her hefty brothers around and plow the fields and so on, so we’re never really afraid for her, and she deals with him with the same matter-of-factness that Dante deals with the front lines. The closest thing the novel has to a moment of honest to God tension is when the Nazi soldiers find the body of the one who was harassing Angelina, and they ransack the village looking for partisans. One of the soldiers smacks Angelina across the head with a rifle, and her dog takes out his throat for his trouble. Sabatini somehow manages to elicit more sympathy and fear for the dog than for any of the people in the village (but he’s a good and loyal little puppy, so of course he escapes the nasty soldiers). And… that’s it really.
The title, if you’re still inclined to be curious about that kind of thing, could actually be read as a metaphor for Dante’s life. He’s reputed to have a horrible temper, something he inherited from his abusive father, and it’s always getting him in trouble. Or at least we’re told it always is; it’s one of those things that we’re told, but never really materializes in an interesting or dramatic way in the text. Dante never does anything really upsetting or extreme. I don’t even remember him raising his voice. He actually comes off as rather meek and diligent, particularly after joining the army. The war Dante is fighting is with himself, his temper, etc. It’d be a neat little metaphorical package if it was actually played out in the text. I wanted to see what other people thought about the book, and I came across Kathleen Govier’s review. I would have probably liked the novel Govier described in her review, but Dante’s War wasn’t it. She must have been reading some other Dante’s War, by some other Sandra Sabatini.
I’m so disappointed. The One With the News and The Dolphins at Sainte-Marie were these lovely, remarkable little books, and I was hoping for the same sort of richness from Dante’s War. It just didn’t materialize. Dante’s War feels so much like a “proper” Canadian war drama that it almost borders on parody in some places (Dante’s best friend always being assigned with Dante out of some kind of managerial kindness, the mother who lays upstairs dying of Cancer, the scene where the heroine’s dog attacks a group of Nazi soldiers, takes one’s throat, and then escapes unharmed, I mean seriously).
I’m now caught up on my reviews. Next is Bad Behavior, by Mary Gaitskill.
