Book Review: Beneath a Scarlet Sky (2017), by Mark Sullivan
Beneath a Scarlet Sky is the compelling (and mostly true) story of Pino Lella, a teenager growing up in WWII-ravaged Milan. When he is sent out of the war-torn city to a rural summer camp on the Italian-Swiss border, run by priests, he begins ferrying Jewish refugees across the border into Switzerland. But that's just where the adventures begin for Pino, who ends up (among other things) working as a spy for the Italian resistance, falling in love, and even (***SPOILER ALERT***) coming face-to-face with Benito Mussolini.
Action-packed, and expertly-paced, this book accomplishes what a great thriller (indeed, any great story) should: it pulls you through with very, very few dull moments. So engaging and adventure-filled was this story that I read it in less than a week and had those moments -- when not reading the book -- of being like, "I wonder what's going to happen next." For me, a pretty jaded, easily-bored reader of fiction, I feel like that's significant.
On the other hand, the actual writing of the book exhibits a certain bleached-out, overly-edited feeling and a pacing and structure that seemed almost computer-generated. It was very hard to sense any real "touch" from the author, and seemed as though it was written by committee, specifically to become a movie. And, lo and behold, they're filming a movie of it right now.
The book's style made a lot more sense to me once I realized the author, Mark Sullivan, has "collaborated" with hyper-prolific thriller author James Patterson on a number of books. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but... Patterson is known to have a very specific style and editing process and -- here we get into rumor territory -- a "stable" of authors whom he trains and co-writes books with. Not a bad system... a lesser-known author gets a leg-up and Patterson gets his name on more books ergo more money. When you're powerful and successful enough to make people's careers, this is the kind of thing you get to do.
One of the best things I can say about the book is that, despite having a good bit of schmaltz here and there (it's difficult for a computer program to handle romance well) the story pulled no punches when it came to violence and destruction. There is no attempt to coddle the reader or shield them from the horrors of the war; Sullivan takes that thing you're hoping doesn't happen and pushes it to happen.
Having said all this about the writing, etc. I have to say I'd probably recommend this book to the right person. After all, it does what fiction should do, in the end...it entertains you and takes you away from reality for a half-dozen hours or whatever.
On a personal note, my grandfather grew up in Italy during WWII and I've always had a fascination with both the war as a whole and also Italy's role in the conflict. I grew up listening to my grandfather tell me stories of German soldiers raiding his tiny village for supplies and able-bodied men, watching bombers fly over-head and feeling the ground shake as the bombs fell in the valleys below, and -- mostly -- of the desperate poverty and hunger that afflicted his village and others like it as the war cut off civilian commerce and made supplies expensive and scarce.
One thing the book acknowledges is that the War in Italy is one of the more forgotten aspects of the war, for some reason, perhaps because the Italian army was less than heroic, and there were no decisive, notorious battles like D-Day or the Battle of Britain. But in this book I heard echoes of my grandfather's stories about an already-poor country and it's people ravaged by the meat-grinder of a war they did not support and wanted nothing to do with. This story absolutely needed to be told, not only because it's a great story but because it brings more attention to the forgotten Italian theater of World War II and the people who lived and died in it.
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