If, according to Calvino’s lesson, multiplying stories is one of the vocations of the modern novel, Andrea Camilleri has multiplied many of them. And not only for the quantity of novels that Sellerio continues to publish even after the death of the master, but for the ability to dominate different literary strands. It was 2008 when Camilleri wrote «The gray suit», at an important age (he was born in 1925) in which he dominated bookstores and TV with two successful genres, detective stories with Montalbano and historical and civil novels. But in the geography of the human the master continually dug to re-signify the very idea of literature as comparison, investigation, challenge. And so «The gray suit» was born, now re-edited by Sellerio, with a precious twist by Salvatore Silvano Nigro and a long, cultured note by Antonio D’Orrico entitled «Mourning suits Adele».
Set between Pirandello’s Montelusa and Palermo, it is an “atypical” story in the Camillerian universe which makes one think of certain Moravian atmospheres due to the “cold” suspension in which events and people are immersed. The protagonists of this story which – writes Nigro – “opens the way to an astonishing “Italian” trend with a bourgeois setting”, are two widowers: he is a high-ranking bank official who has recently retired, she is a charming thirty-year-old “widow”. At the centre, obviously, there is the splendid and impenetrable Adele with her widowed “grey suit”, a detail of their initial acquaintance which represents the ingenious key to understanding this story which, Nigro recalls, is “the locutionary autobiography of a social class”.
Therefore, it seems almost obvious that we are preparing to read a story about horns, like those so often represented in Italian comedy. The writer immediately communicates this to us through one of the two anonymous letters (the other is a mafia warning) received from the husband who was already aware and resigned to the natural amorous exuberance of his wife, who nevertheless always remained by his side. But this is not the most important element of the story. «The novel is restless, it cannot find peace» writes D’Orrico, «there is a vague funerary feeling» (Nigro), not only in the details, but also in the language which is not the lush Vigatese which has become «proverbial for its original plurilingual mixture» writes D’Orrico but a monotonous language. As is the story without “fancy”, without the “landscape” of Vigàta, without detective stories, but with a mystery for everyone, starting with the husband: Adele, “the dark lady in the gray suit”.