Publisher – Black Swan
Publication Date – 15th April 2010
Paperback – 496 pages
Genre – General Fiction

Source– Received from publisher for review

Book Information -New York, 1926.  Rocco Campobello, the great tenor – one of the most revered entertainers in the world – collapses on stage.  He emerges from this brush with death a changed man: a fallen, but enlightened colossus.  Casting off the mantle of celebrity, he embarks on a journey into his dark and sinister past which takes him back to his impoverished early life and to the city that made him: Naples.  There he is forced to confront the truth about himself, his ruthlessness and treachery and to address ghosts from his past that he now seeks to lay to rest. Magnificent, flamboyant, yet impoverished and decaying, Naples is a city caught in the throes of change.  The old ways, embodied in the activities of the camorra, the Italian mafia, are fighting to survive in the face of the brutal new politics of Mussolini and his Fascists.  Don Graziani, head of one of the city’s most respected – and feared – families, has much to lose if the great tenor’s career falls apart.  In league with Campobello’s near-estranged wife, he conspires to re-launch the great voice in magnificent fashion.  When persuasion fails, he reveals his true colours and resorts to brutal blackmail as the means to force the tenor to go along with their plans and return to the stage.  Rediscovering his own integrity, Campobello is compelled to hatch a dangerous counter plot of his own in order to outmanoeuvre them all and reclaim his life as his own…

Review – Rocco Campobello is one of the world’s greatest opera stars – until the night he nearly dies on stage.  After his near brush with death he decides it is time to ‘put his house in order’ as he knows he may not be around for much longer.  To do this, he puts his celebrity lifestyle behind him and moves back to his home town of Naples in order to find an old friend of his and put right some past wrongs.  However, there are a few people who are not happy with this plan.  Molly Campobello, Rocco’s wife, and Don Emilio Graziani, a very dangerous man who has helped Rocco a lot with his career and stands to lose a great deal of money if the Maestro never sings again, work together on a plan to make sure that he takes to the stage again, regardless of his physical and mental problems.  However, Rocco knows what Graziani is like and calls on some of his most loyal and trusted friends to come up with a plan to ensure that this does not happen.
I loved the fact that this book is told from the perspective of so many different characters.  It meant that I could really get a feel for the characters as I got a good insight into their lives, feelings and their relationship with Rocco.  The characters were all quite complex, with everybody having both good and bad points, and this made most of them very realistic and likeable.  However, I would have liked to have found out a bit more about Rocco during his time as the Maestro from Rocco’s point of view.  It is touched on by some of the other characters’ stories but not covered in much detail, although there is a lot of information on Rocco’s life before he became a star, as well as after the incident on stage.
There is a huge amount of detail about Naples in this book, although at times perhaps a bit too much, and I really enjoyed reading the vivid descriptions of the area and the people that lived there.  I also found it very interesting reading about the pressures being put on Italy at that time, both from Mussolini and the Italian mafia.  It seemed like quite a dangerous time to be living in Italy and this only added to the tension and drama of the story.
However, the thing I loved most about this book was the amount of plotting going on between the different characters to get Rocco back into singing.  I was actually quite disgusted by some of the things that people close to Rocco were willing to do in order to get their own way, including putting Rocco’s life in danger, or killing and kidnapping other people.  It felt like as soon as one character had the upper hand, another plot would be revealed and everything would change.  This kept me hooked as I just had to keep reading in order to find out what the next twist in the tale would be.  I especially loved the final twist in the story and the ending.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found it to be a gripping and intriguing read.