About Streaking

Post 1056:

I reluctantly started reading Beneath A Scarlett Sky because people told me it was good. Now I’m finished. Good news. It’s good. It did take a long spell to complete. First of all, it’s long. Excuse me. Descriptive. I guess I’m a fan of very descriptive writing…though it sometimes feels like filler. Here it makes sense. This is basically a true story that’s been made into a novel, so details matter a lot in order to honor the dead and so forth.

The story of the protagonist is quite amazing. You get to basically watch the ending of WW2 from a front row seat, told through the journey of an actual young Italian man who managed to survive the whole thing. It made me feel like he had lived more life by 19 than I’ll ever get the chance at.

Some people go on streaks. It seems like this fella was simply attracted to action. I believe that lives have streaks. He rode his out like a passionate real-life hero.

I’m going to spoil the rest here so STOP if you’d rather not know what happens.

Even though he gets to meet dictators and generals and saves lives and watches atrocities and escapes almost certain death, the love story kept me reading this book. Frankly, I wanted to know if our dude wound up with his lover. I really wanted to find out, even though I suspected the odds were against it.

The scene where he has to watch her execution is (tragically) worth the sometimes long-winded nature of the story. I couldn’t imagine. When he’s about to kill himself, I felt like I was right there. It was an awful mix of things. The Germans were defeated and his country was free. The Americans were down to party and he’d survived, only to lose his woman at the eleventh hour. Frigging terrible.

But then you find out the actual dude had a crazy cool life even after the war. His streak just kept going. Inevitably, it sounds like he had some bad ones too. Shit catches up with us all. The picnic never lasts as long as we’d like. This is a story that inspired me more than it entertained. That was probably the point, but I don’t like to speculate on author’s intentions. Written with care and easy enough to read. I’d give it a good grade in the historical (fiction?) category. Give it a shot if you have time and like WW2 stuff especially. I’m waiting for the next great novel about The War of the Three Sanchos. Early medieval Spain never gets the love it deserves.

Cheers and see you after.