Don't touch me, by Andrea Camilleri

The history of literature is full of great little works. From The Little Prince until A Chronicle of a Death Foretold. What happens is that this type of work is not usually found in the literature of the XXI century, more prone to editorial imposition or reading tastes, to great novels in terms of dimensions, with which perhaps justify the prices of some of those voluminous specimens.

Ramblings on the publishing market aside, Don't Touch Me appears as a great little work. To make matters worse, framed within the crime novel genre (so prone to extensive and convoluted works).

And, despite seeming contradictory, to talk about Laura, the undisputed protagonist of this novel, I will bring up the extensive crime novel: «The truth about the Harry Quebert case«. And I do it because I find the fundamental parallelism between the two plots interesting. Knowing a character like Laura in the first case or like Nola in the second is a shell of perspectives on the people who knew them in life.

The mysteries of Laura or Nola turn them into enigmatic questions for the reader. Women who seem to be who they are not, or who hide parts of their lives that we sense very different from their social appearance.

From the first moment you start reading, Camilleri has you trapped in the search for answers to Laura's disappearance. A woman who has everything, who seems to function socially at will, who dedicates her time to what she likes the most. Why disappear?

Commissioner Maurizi is tying up the ends of the case (yes, also like Marcus Goldman in the Harry Quebert case). The difference between these two novels is in the form. Do not touch me is fast-paced at all times. Short scenarios and fluent dialogues. Short but juicy phrases, subtle character profiles to let your imagination run wild.

Little works like this suggest much more than what is read. And the truth is that everything is due to the virtue of the author, his ability to invite you to consider options, to ask questions, to seek justifications.

In summary, a great little novel to taste without delay, without rhetorical excesses but with the great synthesizing trade of the virtuoso of writing. Brushstrokes on historical enigmas and the great History of art, which has awakened so much the popular imagination and the imagination of Art lovers.

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