THE BREWER OF PRESTON

In 19th-century Sicily, a cornucopia of craziness surrounds the première of an opera buffo in a small music-loving town.

The story begins on a dark and rainy night in Vigàta with Gerd Hoffer, a little boy who desperately needs to go to the bathroom but is afraid to use the privy and daren't wake anyone else in the house. The scene shifts to a heated meeting of the Progress Social Club of Vigàta, where the proposed staging of an obscure opera, The Brewer of Preston, greatly upsets the traditionalists in the group, which includes the snide Canin Bonmartino and the esteemed Dr. Gammacurta. After the meeting, plots and subplots promptly begin to brew. Not far away, randy widow Concetta Lo Russo breathlessly prepares for a late-night rendezvous. (Colorful names abound: Pippino Mazzaglia, Dom Memè Ferraguto, Cocò Impiduglia, Turiddru Macca, etc.) And so it goes, the story rolling forward as the buffo battle intensifies and backward to incorporate juicy anecdotes from the town's past, like the comically grotesque overkill of the teenage son of a "legitimate Sicilian businessman" that began a long-standing vendetta. Citizens on both sides of the dispute scour the small town to enlist supporters. When someone resorts to arson, it's a comic misadventure. Puckishly titled chapters add zest to the mix, while several pages of endnotes translate the sprinkling of Italian phrases and obscure artistic references.

Fans of Camilleri's long-running Inspector Montalbano series (Angelica's Smile, 2014, etc.) will be familiar with his brand of lusty lunacy, carried here to a degree that rivals Boccaccio.