– Nino Ricci
A local author whom I've had the honour of meeting in person multiple times. Admittedly, my introduction to him was not the nicest one, as I was mandated to read Lives of the Saints via high school curriculum instead of by free choice; a cause to dislike of itself. Years later, while on the opposite end of town, a brand-name drug store which I dread having to visit so often had a used book sale for charity. There I found the same school copy I had read, wearing the same ink stamp on its sides, pilfered from the textbook storerooms and newly commandeered under a somewhat corporate cause. I bought it out of irony and revisited the book.
With aged eyes, I understood the reason I had so much trouble with reading it back in school was its unusual and ineffective choice of narrator. In a story about ostracism, the only true perspective should fall on the persecuted—not the person related to them by chance. While it had its moments, Lives of the Saints is a difficult to understand book, simply because the majority of its own plot is inaccessible to the narrator.
