![]() ![]() Pietro is, despite Faulks’ attempts at rendering him as a little troubled by the tribulations of his life, for all intents and purposes merely a hook on which an author hangs his idea. The offspring of such parents can perhaps be forgiven for having no spark of character himself. From an early stage in the reading, Faulks’ reliance on stereotypical characters becomes obvious. ![]() After the war, Russell Senior develops into a dull man, interested in etymology. Francesca, of course, is the future mother of Pietro, who will be born in 1950. Whilst in the country, Russell Senior meets Francesca: a beautiful nineteen year-old farmer’s niece who lives with her uncle and aunt on the farm with their three large sons. Faulks lays down what we are to assume to be key moments and, by extension, places of Pietro’s life (though we’re later told that, of course, these are not the only places that he has been to, and therefore a different story altogether could have been told) however, the writing is unchallenging, to the point of being bland - so much so that even Pietro’s great psychological meltdown in Quezaltenango, Guatemala is drab, barely registering as potentially important.Ī Fool’s Alphabet (Vintage, 1993) begins before Pietro Russell’s birth, with A for Anzio, Italy in 1944, where his father, Raymond Russell, is engaged in the war, convalescing then in Sorrento from a shell wound. What then, asks Sebastian Faulks, might a life look like if that new arrangement were structured by the alphabetical order of some of the places a character has visited? This then being the central conceit and framework of an idea, we are introduced to Pietro Russell who has reason to travel widely because of his photography profession. The essential plot lines of a life may, conceivably, be read as randomised if disarranged and placed down again in a different order. ![]()
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