The Leopard

Three times I have tried and failed to connect with Breaking Bad but I kept going back to it as I was constantly being told it was not to be missed. And so it was with The Leopard, even though it came highly recommended and with LP Hartley( I will admit to having to look him up) calling it ‘perhaps the greatest novel of the century.’

It took an escape to Turkey, a large glass of Turkish Chardonnay, who knew it was so good, at the insistence of Mendriss the bar man, I promised to make him famous, to get past the first few pages for a third time.

Twenty four hours later it was done and I suddenly exited the world I had been engulfed in to find that the olive tree I was shading under wasn’t Sicily but still ( the beautiful it has to be said) Turkey, so swept up in the world of the Prince of Salina had I been.

A beautiful evocative book that gave as much insight into life as it did into the dusty unsettled world and history of Sicily. Do not miss this book, I realise now it wasn’t the book that was hard to get into it was just that as with everything in my life, the timing was wrong and as much as I have enjoyed my time in Turkey and the Chardonnay has been a revelation, next year I will be Italy bound to find my very own Prince of Salina.

I still incidentally haven’t watched Breaking Bad.