Amazon.com Review
In the annals of great literature, Malta's one potential claim to fame is that it
might have been the location of Calypso's island in
The Odyssey; apart from that, this tiny, windswept island midway between Italy and Libya makes itself scarce on the fictional front. But Nicholas Rinaldi brings it front and center in his remarkable second novel,
The Jukebox Queen of Malta, and if his descriptions of the place leave you cold, his characters won't. Set during the early years of World War II, the story begins with the arrival of American soldier Rocco Raven, late of Brooklyn, during an air raid. While running from an attacking Messerschmitt, Raven is rescued by Jack Fingerly, a shadowy character who may--or may not--be an Army intelligence officer. To Rocco, a car mechanic in civilian life with a taste for Melville, Nietzsche, and Edgar Allan Poe, nothing about Malta makes sense--except his feelings for Melita Azzard, the eponymous heroine whom he meets during one of the incessant bombings that punctuate life on the island:
There was a freedom to the way she moved, a confidence and self-assurance. She paused to look up as yet another Stuka swept by, this one trailing a plume of black smoke from its fuselage. Then she looked back, over her shoulder, and saw him coming along half a block behind her.
Though the romance between Rocco and Melita is at the heart of the novel, Rinaldi has more than wartime love on his mind. His island is a marvelous place populated by unhappy pilots who get promoted every time they're shot down; repairmen who have turned jukeboxes into a wartime industry; old men who dream of a "Greater Malta" composed of an annexed Italy ("Sicily we don't want, it's too full of thugs and mafiosi. Rome we give to the pope, but the rest of Italy is ours"); and ordinary people who carry on their quotidian lives in the midst of not-so-quotidian carnage. There's a dreamy, disturbing quality to this novel, as though
Catch-22 and
Alice in Wonderland met and married. Rocco blames it on the island: "Malta was doing this--everything shifting, turning, uncertain"; the reader, however, knows better. This jewel of a novel owes everything to Nicholas Rinaldi's tilted imagination and considerable prose talents.
--Alix Wilber
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
In fluid prose and with subtle psychological insight, Rinaldi (Bridge Fall Down) writes of wartime love as a kind of complex anesthetic, or as a soul-saving form of amnesia during violent times. During the early years of WWII, U.S. Army Corporal Rocco Raven is sent to the small Mediterranean island of Malta on a vague intelligence mission concerning wire taps. Because of its key geographic position between Sicily and Africa, Malta has been subjected to daily Italian and German bombardments, and it seems that the only person keeping his head clear of falling rubble is Roccos commanding officer, shifty Jack Fingerly, who dresses inappropriately in a Florida sports shirt and disappears when the going gets bad. Walking along pitted streets lined by gutted buildings, Rocco meets and immediately falls in love with Melita Azzard, a beautiful, green-eyed Maltese woman who drives a pink Studebaker hearse, delivering her cousin Zammits handmade jukeboxes to the many bars that cater to English and American troops. Rocco learns Maltese history from Nardu Camilleri, whose national pride drives him to vainly shoot at enemy planes with his outdated rifle. As the conflict accelerates, Rocco and Melita occasionally manage to escape, driving through Maltas rocky terrain and swimming naked in the ocean, and Rocco hopes for a future that sanctifies their love. Readers may find echoes of Louis De Bernieress Correllis Mandolin here, in the juxtaposition of local history, island romance and senseless violence, but Rinaldis voice is distinct in its honest portrayal of a peoplelong deprived of food, information and entertainmentstruggling to reconnect to the world. While sometimes the plot momentum slows with long-winded dialogue, this is a compelling tale of lovers straining to hear the music through the din of a war-ravaged planet.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
