"Scent of a Woman" by Giovanni Arpino (1969)

"'Hopeless.  You want to probe, explain.  You'll never do it.  All of you, if you saw an angel standing on a street corner, what would you do?  I'll tell you what: you'd count his feathers.  To make sure, to verify.  That's the way you are."

Giovanni Arpino was an Italian novelist, journalist and poet.  Scent of a Woman is his most famous book.  This book has been adapted into a movie twice, once in 1974 and later, more famously, in 1992.  The 1992 version featured Chris O'Donnell and Al Pacino.

The novel and its 1992 adaptation don't have much in common.  I haven't seen the 1974 Italian version, but perhaps that movie is more similar to what Arpino wrote.  The American movie is more of a bonding between an older man and a younger man, while the novel is more a meditation on love in the face of loneliness.  The novel is very short, and adapting it into a screenplay would require both adding to the story and fleshing out some of the characters.

Is the book good?  I thought it was just OK.  I found the protagonist hard to sympathize with, and I often wondered why he was so fascinated by the older, more worldly man who drives the plot.  I also couldn't see why the protagonist was so interested (and complicit in) the relationship between this older man and a younger woman.  Why would the protagonist have cared?

This novel isn't long, however, and I never felt that it was boring.

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