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WORK TITLE: The Book of Hidden Things
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 5/23/1981
WEBSITE:
CITY: London
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY: Italian
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born May 23, 1981.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. School of Life, London, England, faculty member. Has worked as business consultant.
WRITINGS
Author of other books, essays, and newspaper and magazine articles. Author of screenplay for film of his novel La ragazza dei miei sogni, directed by Saverio Di Biagio and released by
Draka Production in 2017.
SIDELIGHTS
Francesco Dimitri is an author of novels, nonfiction books, essays, journalism, and more. He had written several books in Italian before deciding “to start from scratch in another language,” English, as he told as online interviewer at My Life, My Books, My Escape. His books have been called “magic realism,” but he told at interviewer at the Thinker’s Garden website that he generally writes “very realistic novels with strong elements of magic in them.” In his first English-language novel, The Book of Hidden Things, “I wanted to make readers feel the magic,” he told the interviewer at My Life, My Books, My Escape. “I wanted to make them believe in it. I wanted to explore friendship, and memory, and the sense of loss you get when you realise that you always have to make choices in life, and whatever choice you pick, there will be a trade-off.”
The novel deals with the reunion of four men in their thirties who have been friends since they were children. They have agreed to meet every year in their small hometown, Casalfranco, located in the Puglia region of southern Italy. One year, however, three of them, lawyer Mauro, physician Tony, and fashion photographer Fabio, arrive to find that Art, the leader of their group, is absent, even though he had always been insistent that they all keep the appointment. They learn that Art, who has never settled into a career, has been growing and selling marijuana, an illegal and dangerous business, and that he had been romantically involved with a woman who is mentally ill. He also is said to have healed the cancer-stricken daughter of a local organized crime boss. They wonder if any of these factors played a role in Art’s disappearance, and they recall that he vanished without explanation once before, during their school days, when he walked into an olive grove and did not return for a week. At the time he said he simply ran away, but his friends did not believe him. The police decline to search for Art because of his criminal ties, so his three friends investigate on their own, and in the process they discover a book he has been writing called The Book of Hidden Things: A Field Guide. In it he claims to have been taken away by supernatural beings called “hidden things.”
While trying to solve the mystery surrounding Art, Mauro, Tony, and Fabio, who alternate as first-person narrators of the story, must also confront problems of their own. Mauro is bored with his life and career. Tony, who feels alienated from his home village because he is gay, learns some disturbing secrets about his family. Fabio likewise finds the town provincial and limited, and he receives bad news as well, that his father has Alzheimer’s disease. Meanwhile, he becomes attracted to Mauro’s wife, Anna.
“All I wanted to do was turn up the volume of reality – of friendship, of magic, of pleasure, of fear,” Dimitri explained of the novel in a post for the Whatever website. “I set the story in a place where reality is already loud: I took a land which already borders on the fantastic, and made it slightly more. There are things in the book which might seem made-up (the local mafia called Sacred United Crown) but are real, and others which look real but are made-up (no, I won’t reveal the trick).”
Several critics thought Dimitri told a rich, atmospheric story. He “has created a thrilling spectacle that also manages to point poignantly at the way the landscapes we grow up in shape us in ways even beyond our understanding.” related a Kirkus Reviews contributor. Jessica Bates, writing in BookPage, called the novel “a tale of adventure, mystery, friendship and heart-wrenching beauty that will make you re-examine what is holy, what is true and what is beyond the realm of possibility.” Booklist commentator Lynnanne Pearson noted that The Book of Hidden Things “is less about hidden supernatural things and more about the things we hide from our friends and from ourselves.”
In Locus, Lila Garrott commended Dimitri’s portrayal of the setting and the primary characters, although she found the supporting characters, particularly the women, less well-drawn. This is not a “fatal flaw,” however, given the book’s strengths in other areas, she said. “The landscape, almost a character in itself, is so impressively rendered that, between that and the solid relationship that does exist between the narrators, the plot doesn’t have to be complicated or unpredictable to land with a significant emotional impact and a sense of real supernatural dread and wonder,” she remarked. She added: “Dimitri may not have fulfilled every goal he set for himself, but the resulting novel remains fascinating, and more than readable.” Some others praised The Book of Hidden Things without qualification. A Publishers Weekly reviewer concluded: “Dimitri’s beautifully written tale, steeped in nostalgia, folklore, and religion, will enthrall and terrify readers.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, June 1, 2018, Lynnanne Pearson, review of The Book of Hidden Things, p. 52.
BookPage, July, 2018, Jessica Bates, review of The Book of Hidden Things, p. 19.
Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2018, review of The Book of Hidden Things.
Locus, June, 2018, Lila Garrott, review of The Book of Hidden Things.
Publishers Weekly, April 9, 2018, review of The Book of Hidden Things, p. 58.
ONLINE
My Life, My Books, My Escape, https://mylifemybooksmyescape.wordpress.com/ (July 5, 2018), interview with Francesco Dimitri.
School of Life website, https://www.theschooloflife.com/ (August 26, 2018), brief biography.
Thinker’s Garden, http://www.thethinkersgarden.com/ (June 16, 2014), interview with Francesco Dimitri.
Titan Books website, https://titanbooks.com/ (August 26, 2018), brief biography.
Whatever, https://whatever.scalzi.com/ (July 3, 2018), essay by Francesco Dimitri.
Quoted in Sidelights: to start from scratch in another language,”
“I wanted to make them believe in it. I wanted to explore friendship, and memory, and the sense of loss you get when you realise that you always have to make choices in life, and whatever choice you pick, there will be a trade-off.”
JUL 05 2018
2 COMMENTS
INTERVIEW
AUTHOR INTERVIEW: FRANCESCO DIMITRI
603226B9-9D05-43A9-81BD-69F1FF403884
Today I am interviewing Francesco Dimitri, author of the new fantasy novel, The Book of Hidden Things.
◊ ◊ ◊
DJ: Hi Francesco! Thanks for agreeing to do this interview!
For readers who aren’t familiar with you, could you tell us a little about yourself?
Francesco Dimitri: I am Italian. I live in London now, and I write in English, but once upon a time I used to live in Rome and publish books in Italian. At some point I decided to start from scratch in another language. The only problem being – I did not speak that language yet.
DJ: What were some of your influences for The Book of Hidden Things?
56B46B06-6536-46F5-8221-E8A8EBD43447
Francesco: I have very wide tastes. I think you can see traces of Robert Macfarlane, with his perfect sense of the connection between people and place, and Joe Lansdale, with his uncanny capacity to write stories you read in three hours and stay with you forever. Donna Tartt taught me the kind of magic I wanted to write about, and I regularly go back and study Angela Carter to learn new things about sensuousness in prose. That said, I try to keep the real world in mind as my main influence. I do like the real world quite a lot, with all its shortcomings.
DJ: Could you briefly tell us a little about your main characters? Do they have any cool quirks or habits, or any reason why readers with sympathize with them?
Francesco: I wanted them to act, move, and feel, like real people. Not particularly good or bad, just human, with their human foibles, incoherences, and so on. Tony is the one I feel closer to: he believes that friends and family come before everything else, and so do I.
DJ: What is the world and setting of The Book of Hidden Things like?
Francesco: it is the real world. It is Puglia, a remote and beautiful region in Southern Italy, amped up a little.
DJ: What was your favorite part about writing The Book of Hidden Things?
Francesco: All of it. The fact is, I love writing. I have some of the best time of my life with laptop, tea, and a word processor.
DJ: What do you think readers will be talking about most once they finish it?
Francesco: Art, I hope.
DJ: Did you have a particular goal when you began writing The Book of Hidden Things? Was there a particular message or meaning you are hoping to get across when readers finish it? Or is there perhaps a certain theme to the story?
Francesco: there are themes, though not messages as such: themes are more powerful than messages. I wanted to make readers feel the magic, I wanted to make them believe in it. I wanted to explore friendship, and memory, and the sense of loss you get when you realise that you always have to make choices in life, and whatever choice you pick, there will be a trade-off.
DJ: When I read, I love to collect quotes – whether it be because they’re funny, foodie, or have a personal meaning to me. Do you have any favorite quotes from The Book of Hidden Things that you can share with us?
Francesco: I’m not too comfortable quoting myself when I’m sober.
DJ: Now that The Book of Hidden Things is released, what is next for you?
Francesco: I’m writing a nonfiction book on how to reconnect with wonder. It is called That Sense of Wonder, and it draws on history, art, science, and other passions of mine. I’m putting the last touches on it right now. Once I’m done, and after some beach-intensive holidays, I will start the next novel. I have tons of notes and ideas about it, but I tend not to talk about projects which are not at least almost done.
DJ: Where can readers find out more about you?
Francesco: Only on Twitter, where my handle is @fdimitri. I don’t have a huge online presence. I really like chatting to people, and social media are just too distracting for me: I focus on one and that’s it.
DJ: Before we go, what is that one thing you’d like readers to know about The Book of Hidden Things that we haven’t talked about yet?
Francesco: it is hidden, of course.
DJ: Is there anything else you would like add?
Francesco: I tried to write a book that makes you forget about the world while you are reading, and makes you look at the world with new eyes when you are done. I can’t guarantee I succeded, but
DJ: Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to answer my questions!
Francesco: My pleasure!
About the Book:
Four old school friends have a pact: to meet up every year in the small town in Puglia they grew up in. Art, the charismatic leader of the group and creator of the pact, insists that the agreement must remain unshakable and enduring. But this year, he never shows up.
A visit to his house increases the friends’ worry; Art is farming marijuana. In Southern Italy doing that kind of thing can be very dangerous. They can’t go to the Carabinieri so must make enquiries of their own. This is how they come across the rumours about Art; bizarre and unbelievable rumours that he miraculously cured the local mafia boss’s daughter of terminal leukaemia. And among the chaos of his house, they find a document written by Art, The Book of Hidden Things, that promises to reveal dark secrets and wonders beyond anything previously known.
603226B9-9D05-43A9-81BD-69F1FF403884
About the Author:
Francesco Dimitri is an Italian magic realist author living in London, a business story-teller, and a lifetime searcher for wonder. He has written in many different forms (nonfiction, fiction, comics, cinema, digital media, essays, magazines) and worked for top business clients. In his quest for wonder he has shot documentaries about UFO cults, slept deep into the forests of Transylvania, conversed with mathematicians, artists, chefs, psychologists, stage magicians, and strangers in crowds.
Francesco Dimitri
Francesco Dimitri is an Italian author and speaker living in London. He is on the Faculty of the School of Life. He is considered one of the foremost fantasy writers in Italy, and his works have been widely appreciated by non-genre readers too. A film has been made from his first novel, La Ragazza dei miei Sogni. The Book of Hidden Things is his debut novel in English.
Francesco Dimitri
Francesco Dimitri
Francesco Dimitri is an Italian author, business facilitator and executive consultant. He has worked with some of the largest Italian and European firms to increase their levels of emotional intelligence and insight. He developed a wonder-based approach to creative thinking and engagement.
Quoted in Sidelights: “very realistic novels with strong elements of magic in them.”
I caught up with Francesco Dimitri, the author of several critically-acclaimed fantasy works including L’eta sottile, Pan, and Alice nel paese della vaporità. This year his 2007 novel La Ragazza dei miei Sogni was optioned for a film by Draka, a Rome-based production company. Francesco spoke to me about his experiences documenting the Raelian cult and shared his thoughts on magic and the publishing world.
On Cults
The Custodian: I’m really excited, and I’ve seen a couple of your works on Amazon. I know you have some non-fiction stuff and some fiction stuff—do you have a few graphic novels as well?
Francesco: Yes. I do nonfiction, fiction, graphic novels and digital writing—I’ve also been writing for magazines in the past but I don’t anymore.
C: Didn’t you also work as a journalist ?
F: Actually one of my most intense experiences was when I studied a UFO cult for more than a year.
C: Which cult?
F: The Raelians. It was interesting because they knew I was shooting a documentary with my crew and it took more than a year to get their trust and more than a year to actually make the study. At one point we were closed in with them in Slovenia for a week.
C: So were you actually living with them for a year?
F: No, no, just following them for a year and living with them for a week . They are a comparatively benevolent cult so they don’t ask you for all your money or stuff like that—they just ask you to pay a yearly fee, quite reasonable too, and then obviously you buy the prophet’s books and the prophet’s t-shirts…
C: So was he [the prophet Claude Vorilhon] on campus?
F: Yes he was always there—every morning he gave a three-hour long speech. He was unbelievable—you need to be charismatic to pull something off like that. He was dressed in a sort of Star Trek suit as white as the pope—and I’m not making this up! And he says he’s Jesus Christ’s half-brother. But again, you don’t see ‘brainwashing’ in action, you see a charismatic guy and people believing what he says.
C: A suit especially put together by an Italian designer [laughs]!
F: Yeah but no one could approach him. Nobody could even talk to him except for me and my colleagues. What was strange was that after we met him, we became very popular with the ladies. I guess because we had been in the presence of the prophet. Of course we were professionals so we didn’t take advantage of the situation.
C: That’s unreal.
F: I remember that every night there was a party and the prophet would sit there in his suit with his wife and four or five topless women feeding him grapes. But again, there was no ‘brain-washing’ that I could see. Raelians believe their ’prophet’ is the half-brother of Jesus Christ. As long as they don’t hurt anybody, and for what I saw they didn’t, they should be free to go on without being ridiculed. A sane sense of humour is important, but it also important to respect other people’s beliefs. Say they’re right, I don’t want to piss off aliens.
C: I always wonder about how that works—I mean you look back at Moses and Muhammed and how they built these big religions and I guess this is a way to study how that possibly occurred.
F: Yeah time changes a lot. Back then it was comparatively easy to be a legend, with just the right amount of luck: mystery was everywhere, because communication was slower, and even less reliable than it is now… Today you need to be damn clever to build a shroud of mystery with the internet and technology.
On Magic
C: Would you call yourself a practitioner?
F: These days I love the notion of pagan, in the stronger romantic sense of the word – and I mean ‘romantic’ both as an artistic stance and as a cultural position. Pagan means peasant, it comes from the Latin pagus, which is countryside. When the Romantics started using the word for themselves, they were taking back the pleasure and the pride of being outside of the borders of mainstream society—and on the other side, the pleasure and the pride of being a part of the wide world of ‘nature’ (though, of course, the definition of ‘nature’ as opposed to ‘culture’ is all but clear-cut). I love the beautiful myth of the Witch-Cult Hypothesis—but when we say it’s a myth it doesn’t meant it’s false. Once you know your history, you’re free to play with myth as much as you want to. And I’m not an historian.
C: Have you found opportunities to bring a magical or esoteric perspective to your novels?
F: I usually write very realistic novels with strong elements of magic in them. My latest novel, L’eta sottile is about learning magic. The entire book is about this young troubled man who is given the opportunity of learning magic. Not the typical magic of fantasy novels, but the magic that is deeper rooted in Giordano Bruno and the Renaissance with deeper elements of [Aleister] Crowley and Neopaganism in it.
C: Speaking of magic, I don’t know if you’ve read any Dylan Dog—I read a few stories years ago to better my Italian because one of my teachers recommended reading foreign language comics books. I was wondering if you were influenced at all by it. Did you read any when you were growing up?
F: I was, but I grew up much more on American comics, Marvel Comics, X-men all that jazz. I didn’t read so much Italian comics.
On Books and Publishing
C: What’s your opinion on the ebook market?
F: Someone says that my book Pan was for a while one of the most widely pirated books in Italy. Even though, of course, when it comes to piracy having numbers is not exactly easy.
C: How do you feel about it?
F: I remember someone else (I’m terrible at remembering names) once said that a writer’s worst enemy is not piracy: it’s obscurity. I think we are going towards a business model where people can get our stuff for free. With Pan, when I found it had been pirated, I placed posted the link to download it on my blog. I was thinking something like ‘It’s better if you get it from me than from others’, and I asked folks to buy it if, after reading it, they liked it. To be honest, most people bought it: if you trust people they will trust you back. Anyway, I read a lot of ebooks, and I love them, but I think the ebook, as every other format, has its limits.
C: Yeah there’s that idea that it’s [a printed book] something you can hold on to and put it in your library. I remember buying every single Harry Potter book with all of the beautiful illustrations and designs on the covers. Do you think that—looking forward—people will still purchase hard copy books?
F: I’m not sure. Ebooks in my opinion reached a plateau—people will still hold to paper books as well. The real danger comes not from formats but from big players like Amazon because we are seeing lots of bookshops dying. Bookshops are the only places where you can really discover books. Amazon did a great job launching the e-book as a format, and to bring books in every house; but we can’t allow Amazon to be the only player in the park.
C: Do you have any other projects you’re working on?
F: Quite a lot, but I feel like if talk about them I lose steam—I get lazy! Otherwise your brain gets the dopamine in it from talking about it, and feels like the most is done. Also, because the way you build stories when you write is very different from the way you build them when you talk.
C: Do you have any advice for up and coming authors?
F: I started writing professionally by crashing into a party.
C: [laughs] Do you mean really crashing a party?
F: I knew there was an upper class party in Rome for an important professor. At the time I was about twenty and dirt poor, but I put on my only suit and started talking on my mobile phone outside the building like I was too damn busy—a little prat that couldn’t be bothered with the peasants at security—and they let me in. I acted as if I was meant to be there and was so sure of my non-existent social position that I couldn’t be bothered. They bought it! I knew there was this important publisher there, so that’s where we met. On a more practical level, write a lot, write every day, and then write some more. Crashing into parties is no good if you can’t do the damn job.
The Big Idea: Francesco Dimitri
JULY 3, 2018 JOHN SCALZI4 COMMENTS
Friendship, magic and a sense of place: All of these are important to Francesco Dimitri, and are the foundation of The Book of Hidden Things, the author’s first book written in English. He’s here to discuss all three, and his novel.
FRANCESCO DIMITRI:
We live in a world full of darkness and grace. There are immortal jellyfish floating in the sea and thousand-year-old woods thriving within cities, friendships which last forever and others which break over a tabletop game, weird legends and even weirder scientific finds. It is a world made of magic, of the good and bad sort. We use rationality as a glue to keep together all the things that we can’t figure out, and it is an important, precious glue, but the building blocks of our world are still all the things that we can’t figure out – the hidden things.
I wanted The Book of Hidden Things to make you feel the magic in the same way that a good joke makes you laugh. I wanted to write an entirely human story with magic as a base note: jokes are about people doing funny things, but they are rarely about people laughing at jokes. Tolkien said that fantasy authors create ‘secondary worlds’, which is a beautiful way to put it. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to play a variation on my own world.
I love books with fireballs (one of my Italian novels had the god Pan, gender-fluid fairies, and flying folks), and yet when I am reading a story and a fireball appears, I am reminded that is a story. This is not bad by itself: if the story is well-crafted, I will still believe that it is true in another world, and I will cry and smile with the characters. But I will not believe that it is true in mine, whereas, when I am reading, say, John Fante’s Ask the Dust, I can believe that the same things might happen to me (absurd as it is). I wanted that. Only, with the supernatural.
TBOHT follows three men in their mid-thirties, friends of a lifetime, who look for the fourth member of their gang, who disappeared. More than investigate, they sniff around the way you would do if there were no trace of your mate and you weren’t sure what to make of it, even considering that your mate has a history of oddness. They set in motion personal consequences they are not ready to deal with, and they find out things about each other which they had tried to keep, well, hidden. You can find a lot of summaries online, but these are the bare bones of the story. There is something about friendship, there is something about the troubles created by a sexist culture, there is something about how hard it is to grow up for real. And there is a sense of magic.
I set the story in a wild, strange, corner of the world: the part of Puglia where I was born, and which I left at 18. Italy is shaped like a boot, and Puglia is the heel of the boot. It is a stark landscape where the reds are very red and the blues couldn’t be more blue. It is as beautiful as unforgiving, blessed and cursed by long hot summers, strong winds, hail. It rarely rains, but when it does, it is often a storm. I wanted this story to convey the landscape, the food, the sex, the wine, how sensuous and excessive everything is down there, and get to the magic through that.
Google ‘Campomarino di Maruggio’ and look at the beaches on which I grew up. Then try ‘ulivi secolari Salento’ and you will see how uncanny olive trees can be. And there is more than visuals. The first warmth in March wakes up the wild flowers and the herbs, and in the smaller villages the air itself is scented throughout spring, 24/7. In summer, you feel the heat on your skin like a physical weight. Flavours are very sweet and very bitter. Not all is good: when Sirocco, the wind from the sea, blows, the air gets damp and your mood too. As local lore has it, Sirocco blows for three days, and for those three days you will be miserable. The sea is miserable too, and the sky. Humans and landscape are joined by breath.
If nature is intense, culture is no less so. There used to be an ancient civilisation, which has been almost entirely wiped away, except for vague traces surviving in ruins, names, folklore. There are small churches and shrines everywhere, in vineyards and barren fields and olive groves, and statues of the Virgin Mary by the beach, with fresh offers left by who knows whom. The local music, la Pizzica, is based on an exorcism ritual which used drums and dance and was still practised in the Sixties. On years even drier than usual, people (well-educated people) will still work what can only be called a magic ritual, dragging tree trunks for miles in the name of Saint Peter, who, so the legend goes, visited there and found a secret spring. It is a place that the Joker would understand: if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stranger.
All I wanted to do was turn up the volume of reality – of friendship, of magic, of pleasure, of fear. I set the story in a place where reality is already loud: I took a land which already borders on the fantastic, and made it slightly more. There are things in the book which might seem made-up (the local mafia called Sacred United Crown) but are real, and others which look real but are made-up (no, I won’t reveal the trick).
And this is all; I won’t say more, not to ruin the punchline.
—-
The Book of Hidden Things: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s
Quoted in Sidelights: “All I wanted to do was turn up the volume of reality – of friendship, of magic, of pleasure, of fear,” Dimitri explained of the novel in a post for the Whatever website. “I set the story in a place where reality is already loud: I took a land which already borders on the fantastic, and made it slightly more. There are things in the book which might seem made-up (the local mafia called Sacred United Crown) but are real, and others which look real but are made-up (no, I won’t reveal the trick).”
About Francesco Dimitri
Francesco Dimitri lives in London, where he arrived, via Rome, from the depths of Southern Italy. His work has variously been defined as magic realism or fantasy.
He published eight books in Italian before switching to English. His first Italian novel was made into a film, and his last was defined by Il Corriere della Sera as the sort of book from which a genre 'starts again'.
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Quoted in Sidelights: “has created a thrilling spectacle that also manages to point poignantly at the way the landscapes we grow up in shape us in ways even beyond our understanding.”
Dimitri, Francesco: THE BOOK OF
HIDDEN THINGS
Kirkus Reviews.
(May 1, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Dimitri, Francesco THE BOOK OF HIDDEN THINGS Titan Books (Adult Fiction) $14.95 7, 3 ISBN: 978-
1-78565-708-5
Three men investigate the increasingly strange circumstances surrounding their old friend's disappearance
from a small Italian town.
Mauro, Tony, Fabio, and Art have been friends since their school days in a southern Italian village. When
Art, their ringleader, suggests that they return each year on the same date to meet up, they agree, and for 17
years they keep their promise. But when Art is a no-show, memories quickly surface of a bizarre incident
from their teen years when he wandered into an olive grove and vanished for seven days. Though Art
returned, he was somehow altered, and the town was torn apart by rumors. Dimitri--a well-known fantasy
author in Italy who is making his English-language debut here--alternates the story from the perspectives of
lawyer and family man Mauro; Tony, a surgeon whose homosexuality makes him an outsider in the strict
Catholic village; and caddish fashion photographer Fabio. The reader gets a bird's eye view of the secrets
the men keep from each other, both about their complicated presents and their different understandings of
Art's first disappearance years ago. Is the Mafia involved? The local priest? The mentally ill woman Art was
seeing? What of the rumor that Art healed a terminally ill girl before his latest vanishing? And how is his
absence tied in to an odd manuscript he was writing called The Book of Hidden Things? In lesser hands,
this blend of detective story, organized crime thriller, and supernatural investigation would feel like a grab
bag of plot devices, but Dimitri has created a thrilling spectacle that also manages to point poignantly at the
way the landscapes we grow up in shape us in ways even beyond our understanding.
A deeply felt look at the idea of home, clothed as a popcornworthy page-turner.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Dimitri, Francesco: THE BOOK OF HIDDEN THINGS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2018. General OneFile,
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Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
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Quoted in Sidelights: “a tale of adventure, mystery, friendship and heart-wrenching beauty that will make you re-examine what is holy, what is true and what is beyond the realm of possibility.”
THE BOOK OF HIDDEN THINGS
Jessica Bates
BookPage.
(July 2018): p19.
COPYRIGHT 2018 BookPage
http://bookpage.com/
Full Text:
THE BOOK OF HIDDEN THINGS By Francesco Dimitri Titan $14.95, 400 pages ISBN 9781785657078
eBook available
DEBUT FICTION
Italian fantasy writer Francesco Dimitri makes his English-language debut with the masterful The Book of
Hidden Things.
When three friends return to their small hometown of Casal-franco in southern Italy to honor a longstanding
pact, their friend Art doesn't show. This isn't the first time he's vanished--decades ago, Art walked between
a grove of gnarled olive trees, shrieked and disappeared. When he returned a week later, his friends didn't
believe his story of having run away.
Always one for drama, Art has left a trail of mysterious stories in his wake. He's growing and selling weed.
He healed the daughter of a Mafia king. Even in his absence, Art's alluring antics have a strong pull on his
friends.
As they follow the clues to learn where Art has vanished to this time, Fabio, Mauro and Tony wrestle with
their own demons. Fabio, a respected yet broke photographer, hates being thrust back into the town he's
outgrown. He learns that his father has Alzheimer's, and he's confronted with an unhealthy desire for
Mauro's wife. Mauro is underwhelmed with his status quo life and yearns for something more. And as Tony
looks to his sister and her husband for answers about Art's disappearance, he learns his sister isn't the
innocent girl he believed her to be.
The stark and sensual landscape of Casalfranco begs us to linger in its ancient and mystical hold. Through
multiple perspectives, Dimitri weaves a tale of adventure, mystery, friendship and heart-wrenching beauty
that will make you re-examine what is holy, what is true and what is beyond the realm of possibility.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Bates, Jessica. "THE BOOK OF HIDDEN THINGS." BookPage, July 2018, p. 19. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A544601878/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=fbf9990e.
Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A544601878
8/13/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1534213039299 3/4
Quoted in Sidelights: “Dimitri’s beautifully written tale, steeped in nostalgia, folklore, and religion, will enthrall and terrify readers.”
The Book of Hidden Things
Publishers Weekly.
265.15 (Apr. 9, 2018): p58+.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Book of Hidden Things
Francesco Dimitri, Titan, $14.95 trade paper
(400p) ISBN 978-1-78565-707-8
Renowned Italian author Dimitri's beautiful first novel written in English, about a group of friends who
have a pact to meet annually in their small Italian hometown, is an evocative meditation on friendship,
adulthood, and the liminal spaces that lie just outside human perception. Tony, a surgeon; Mauro, a lawyer;
and Fabio, a fashion photographer, show up to their meeting place in Casalfranco, but Art, who formed the
pact 17 years before, never arrives. A search of his home uncovers disturbing items, including a very weird
book by Art entitled The Book of Hidden Things: A Field Guide, and the friends discover that Art has
supposedly healed a young girl who had cancer and is now being held by the local mafia. Each of the
friends wants to escape the perceived bonds of his life, and Art's book offers a pathway to a place of
unbelievable bliss and little responsibility, the realm of the Hidden Things. But when the companions learn
the price of entry, they struggle to confront their own demons and decide whether the promised joys are
worth the cost. Dimitri's beautifully written tale, steeped in nostalgia, folklore, and religion, will enthrall
and terrify readers. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Book of Hidden Things." Publishers Weekly, 9 Apr. 2018, p. 58+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A535099962/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=be77163f.
Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A535099962
8/13/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1534213039299 4/4
Quoted in Sidelights: “is less about hidden supernatural things and more about the things we hide from our friends and from ourselves.”
The Book of Hidden Things
Lynnanne Pearson
Booklist.
114.19-20 (June 1, 2018): p52.
COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
* The Book of Hidden Things. By Francesco Dimitri. July 2018. 400p. Titan, paper, $14.95
(9781785657078); e-book (9781785657085).
Four childhood friends make a pact to meet in their home village every year on the same date. Fabio, a
photographer, lawyer Marco, and Tony, a doctor, arrive as usual. When Art, the originator of the pact,
doesn't show, the friends worry. When they search his empty house and find marijuana, a jumble of books,
and rotting food, they worry even further. They report his disappearance to the Carabinieri, who refuse to
investigate because Art has ties to Sacra Corona Unita, the local mafia. The friends decide to investigate on
their own, all the while wondering if Art's recent disappearance is tied to a lost week when he was a
teenager. Art's trail leads to a book, The Book of Hidden Things: A Field Guide, written by Art about that
missing week. In the-book, Art claims that supernatural creatures, the hidden things, were responsible for
his disappearance. Making his debut writing in English, Italian author Dimitri crafts a rich, emotional tale
that is less about hidden supernatural things and more about the things we hide from our friends and from
ourselves. Perfect for book discussion groups to devour and debate.--Lynnanne Pearson
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Pearson, Lynnanne. "The Book of Hidden Things." Booklist, 1 June 2018, p. 52. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A546287558/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=03af656b.
Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A546287558
Quoted in Sidelights: “fatal flaw,” "
The landscape, almost a character in itself, is so impressively rendered that, between that and the solid relationship that does exist between the narrators, the plot doesn’t have to be complicated or unpredictable to land with a significant emotional impact and a sense of real supernatural dread and wonder,”
“Dimitri may not have fulfilled every goal he set for himself, but the resulting novel remains fascinating, and more than readable.”
Lila Garrott reviews The Book of Hidden Things by Francesco Dimitri
July 5, 2018 Lila Garrott
The Book of Hidden Things, Francesco Dimitri. (Titan Books 978-1-785-65707-8, $14.95, 400pp, pb) July 2018.
Francesco Dimitri is a well-regarded fantasy author in Italian. He’s published several novels and graphic novels, and his work has been adapted for film (La ragazza dei miei sogni/The girl of my dreams, 2017). The Book of Hidden Things is his first novel written in English, and it is ambitious in several directions. It’s set in the far south of Italy, in the small town of Casalfranco, almost but not quite too small for tourist attention. Four friends, on graduating high school, pledge to meet at the same pizzeria once a year, no matter what else may be going on in their lives. The fashion photographer Fabio, the respected surgeon Tony, and the staid lawyer Mauro all arrive on time, but their peripatetic and peculiar friend Art does not. Art, a dilettante genius with wide-roving interests, has always been insistent on the maintenance of their meeting pact, and they find when they go to his house that he is missing. Art had a previous, inexplicable teenage episode in which he vanished for a week and then reappeared suddenly, without answers, so the local authorities aren’t likely to take the current disappearance seriously; there’s also the question of whether the Mafia, the Sacra Corona Unita, are involved, and if so, how. But Art does leave behind a manuscript, the titular Book of Hidden Things, and the supernatural explanation it suggests for his absences is not one his friends are readily prepared to entertain.
This is not an ambiguously supernatural novel; it seems quite clear from early on that the magical explanation is the true one. It is a novel about people struggling to understand and accept the supernatural, which means that above all it is a novel of character, held up by the complex web of interpersonal dynamics between the friends and by the convolutions and quirks of their personalities. Dimitri switches between the three searchers as first-person narrators, and this approach works very well. Their voices are perceptibly different from one another, and they have different sets of available information and different ways of thinking about their problems, so the reader is able to use the separate viewpoints to create a parallax view of the situation. Art is also well-constructed as an extremely eccentric person viewed from the outside and in retrospect; he’s remarkably believable, considering how weird he is.
The problem is that the complexity and realism of these character dynamics doesn’t extend outside the group of friends. Women, particularly, don’t come off very well – Dimitri is perceptibly trying to have female characters who have agency and interiority, but Mauro’s wife Anna in particular comes off as an inscrutable object of desire, her actions not governable by any logic the reader can understand. And Art’s long-suffering girlfriend gets written off by the narrative as simply crazy, possibly because someone doing something crazy was the best way to keep the plot moving, which means that she reads more as a plot device than as a person.
This isn’t actually a massive or fatal flaw in the novel, though it does give it a certain interpersonal claustrophobia. That sense of confinement actually plays into one of Dimitri’s other major effects, which is a deep and lavish sense of the realities of the southern Italian countryside, and an incredibly evocative way of writing about Casalfranco and the surrounding region. Both the area’s staggering beauty and its limited opportunities and stagnating technological level are portrayed with an understanding that, in this particular place, it’s still quite possible to be one generation up from being a peasant. Casalfranco is a home and a trap, the context which makes the most sense to these characters and the nightmare they are consistently trying to escape. The landscape, almost a character in itself, is so impressively rendered that, between that and the solid relationship that does exist between the narrators, the plot doesn’t have to be complicated or unpredictable to land with a significant emotional impact and a sense of real supernatural dread and wonder. Which is just as well, because the actual plot is fairly simple, and will not come as a surprise.
It’s instructive, when considering The Book of Hidden Things, to draw a comparison with Peter S. Beagle’s 2017 novel In Calabria, also set in southern Italy, featuring a middle-aged protagonist with little in the way of economic opportunity, and containing a significant Mafia subplot. The interesting thing about the comparison is that The Book of Hidden Things comes off pretty well – the difference between a writer at the top of his form writing about a place he knows mostly by doing research and a writer at the top of his form writing about a place he knows through lived experience. Beagle is better at plot, and at magic, but Dimitri’s language stands up well next to his, which is a real achievement given that Beagle is one of the greatest living masters of the fantastic. Dimitri may not have fulfilled every goal he set for himself, but the resulting novel remains fascinating, and more than readable.
This review and more like it in the June 2018 issue of Locus.