The Leopard

Last night I finished Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s novel The Leopard. It’s a book I’d been meaning to read for years. I never advanced beyond the opening few pages of the copy I bought in Italy ca. 1996, which didn’t then accompany me back to the UK. A similar fate befell a second copy, obtained about a decade later. I hoped for a case of ‘third time lucky’ when I found the volume pictured above at Stephen’s booksop in Monmouth earlier this year. It’s from a 1961 book club edition, and cost me about a fiver.

After breezing through the opening chapter I felt like the time might at last be right to enjoy the novel. Then, however, I became becalmed in Chapter II, and my attention wandered on to other things. Would the third time be so lucky after all? The Leopard has been described as ‘a perfect novel’. Thankfully it isn’t, but it does offer many pleasures: rich & fragrant prose; unexpected and delightful turns of phrase; acute psychological insight – and so on. Somehow though, no matter how much I savoured the text, after putting the book down I would feel scant appetite to pick it back up again.

Having summoned the requisite willpower over the past few days I was amply rewarded on reaching the end. It is an excellent book, and one better appreciated, I suspect, in middle age than in youth – so perhaps it’s just as well my path toward it was such a lengthy & indirect one.