La lega antiNatale [Italian]

This book is centred around the lonely life of Percy Bateman, a middle-aged Irish emigrant living in London. His only social outlet is a solo school, consisting of himself and four other players, which meets every Wednesday night in The King's Head pub. One night it emerges in conversation that everyone in the school hates Christmas, and from there they develop a hare-brained plot to "sabotage Christmas". Bateman is acutely concious of the misery of the lonely at Christmas time, and he becomes effectively the chief tactician for this campaign. The stated target is Christmas, but Bateman's real targets are his upbringing, his father, his native town, and everything else that he blames for his arriving into middle age in such a sad and miserable state. Bateman is a pathetic figure, and the unrelieved misery of his existence is offset by two wildly eccentric characters, one a cross-dresser and the very picture of outward respectability, the other a lino fetishist. This is in many ways a very sad book, and culminates in a truly moving scene involving Bateman, his father and his godfather, in the front room of his father's house. However, you will do a lot of laughing on your way to this denouement. In particular, the speculations of a police seargent about the possible benefits available through the National Health Service had me in stitches.Michael Curtin assembles a gallery of disturbed characters who twist and turn their way through their difficulties and their mad-cap plot en route to striking their blow for The League Against Christmas. The one quibble I had with the book was Bateman's tiresome soliloquays, but otherwise this is a well-plotted, very funny and engaging book that is well worth reading.