The Patron Saint of Second Chances ~ my review

 

Christine Simon’s novel, The Patron Saint of Second Chances, is pure delight to read. It’s beautifully written, touching all the senses and brilliantly painting all the quirky characters. It’s laugh-out-loud funny and warmhearted. The story also has intergenerational drama, humor, and heart.

 

Here is the main silliness: Modern-day Italian villagers in all earnestness make a movie, improvising (ex., the star’s cameo appearance is to be a cardboard cutout sailing by on a Roomba), flying by the seat of their pants creatively and technologically, and seeing no illogic in the movie’s being both a James Bond-like thriller and a musical comedy. Simon writes so many sight gags with perfect comedic timing.

 

Main character, middle-aged Signor Speranza’s stomach twists in knots when the junior plumbing inspector, “this giant toddler with his clip-on tie,” informs him that if his tiny Italian village of Prometto could not pay 70,000 euros to repair the pipes, water to the village would be cut off. All 212 residents would lose their homes and have to move. Self-appointed mayor Signor Speranza, desperate to avoid this fate for his venerable village, and also desperate to avoid having to tell his neighbors this bad news, prays to Saint Vincent, patron saint of plumbing.

 

Saint Vincent is the first of many saints Signor Speranza, a faith-filled man, calls upon. When in need of additional saints for specific pickles he gets in, he consults his Compendium of Catholic Saints. When he cannot find a saint for deliverance from an angry butcher, he prays to Our Lady, Comfort of the Afflicted. When his book shows St. Barbara as patron saint of death by cannonball, he figures she might not be too busy these days, so he can ask her for favor in other messes.

 

And messes he makes! He tells his neighbors one little white lie, which spirals out of control. In rapid succession, Plan A morphs into Plan B, which becomes Plan C, and so forth. The aforementioned homemade movie is the main ruse Speranza cooks up to raise the needed 70,000 euros to save Prometto. Nothing goes as planned.

 

The Patron Saint of Second Chances is a fast-paced story, superbly ridiculous and charming. It is no accident that Signor Speranza’s name means hope. I wonder what patron saint we can pray to for my hope that someone makes this book into a real movie.

 

The Patron Saint of Second Chances by Christine Simon is, IMHO, funnier than Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm, which ranks pretty high on my list of humorous stories.