They forced me to read La fata carabina (1987) – in French, too – for my summer vacation homework in high school. Despite the Italian copy that I had read instead of the original one, at the age of fifteen I understood very little of Daniel Pennac’s style and language. Partly because I was not very predisposed to books read “necessarily” at school and partly because I found the novel strange and hard to understand. Fortunately, after high school, the author, in the strangeness of him, had so impressed me that I decided to read on my own initiative the first novel of the so-called “Ciclo di Malaussene”, or the paradise of the orcs(1985). And there it was love: I was struck by the eclectic and cutting style of Pennac and I got all the novels of the Malaussene saga and read them all in one breath. I instantly fell in love with the incredible stories Pennac told and every single, weird character.
The protagonist of the saga is precisely Benjamin Malaussene and the novels that are part of it are: The paradise of the ogres (1985), La fata carabina (1987), La prosivendola (1989), Signor Malaussene (1995), Last news from the family (1997) and Passion according to Therese(1999). Six novels that tell about Benjamin, a scapegoat by profession, his bizarre family and the characters that populate the multi-ethnic neighborhood in which they live, Belleville, in Paris.
Benjamin works at the Department Store and his job is to pity dissatisfied customers to the point of inducing them to withdraw complaints and complaints, in order to safeguard the image of the shopping center. It is a thankless job but it allows Benjamin to support the large family, made up of a multitude of half-brothers and half-sisters that his mother has had from several men. The eldest of the stepsisters and Louna, a pregnant nurse and engaged to a doctor; she follows Clara, aspiring photographer and future mother of E ‘Un Angelo (yes, you read that right: the baby is called exactly that); then there are Therese, a psychic who boasts powers of foresight, and Jeremy, a pyromaniac boy with a restless spirit. He concludes the circle of Malaussene Il Piccolo (that’s right, that’s what it’s called),
Benjamin’s misadventures and his involvement in shady facts begin in The Paradise of the Orcs, when a series of bombs explode in the Department Store and the first suspect of the police is Malaussene. To clear himself of the accusations and prove his innocence, Benjamin relies on his investigative instincts and on the handsome Aunt Julia, an assault journalist with whom Ben falls in love. Having found the guilty bombers and a new job (Malaussene will scapegoat at the publishing house Edizioni del Taglione), the first chapter of the saga ends.
In The Fairy Carbine Benjamin is instead involved by the police who investigate the murders of some elderly people in Belleville, involved in a drug ring. Maluassene, with the support of his brothers and sisters and Aunt Julia, will be fundamental for the resolution of the case.
In La prosivendola Benjamin Malaussene finds himself investigating the death of his sister Clara’s boyfriend, who was brutally murdered. Charged by Regina Zabo, the director of Edizioni del Taglione, to assume the identity of a writer who must remain secret, Benjamin is the victim of an attack and ends up in a coma, only to wake up thanks to an unlikely organ transplant.
Signor Malaussene and instead a monologue that Benjamin dedicates to his son, whom he had with Aunt Julia, and who is called “Signor Malaussene” (Pennac does not lose the habit of giving unlikely names to his characters). Benjamin tells the newborn the extraordinary adventure of his birth: he is the son of him and Aunt Julia, but he was born from the womb of a nun who turned into a detective to unmask a prostitution ring and whose investigations also involved Benjamin.
Latest news from the family contains two stories: Signor Malaussene at the theater, centered on a funny monologue on fatherhood, and Cristiani e mori, in which his brother Il Piccolo goes in search of his father.
Concludes the saga The Passion According to Therese, in which Benjamin will again have to deal with the police and their investigations, due to a murder, this time of Therese’s betrothed.
Each novel in the saga is studded with bizarre and unlikely characters, to whom the reader grows fond of page after page. The reading flows tirelessly because you are literally dragged by the narrator into the story, which becomes more and more incredible and exaggerated. But the reader must trust Pennac and let himself be led into the alleys of Belleville and learn to love and get to know its inhabitants, primarily Benjamin’s family.
The author’s wonder and amazement towards mankind shine through the pages, in which a comic, ironic and humorous style is concentrated – despite the common thread of the stories being murders and detective investigations – imbued with metaphors and lexical games.
An imaginative, engaging and pressing style, which however requires a certain concentration in reading, distinguishes the pen of Daniel Pennac, who is able to tell the ugliness and brutality of modern society with tact and originality.
Precisely for all these characteristics, it would be a real shame to deprive oneself of Pennac’s creative flair and not read his novels (preferably in chronological order, since they are linked in succession to each other). And for the same reason, it is better not to have too many expectations in the film version entitled Il paradiso degli orchi (2013) by Nicolas Bary, which is unable to condense characters, style and themes that Pennac develops in the six novels. READ ALSO: FROM BOOK TO CINEMA, THE LITTLE PRINCE BECOMES A FILM Valentina Morlacchi 9 October 2015
