THE LAST ENGLISH VILLAGE

The author sent me a copy of his novel to review:

I don’t know what having a fellowship at The British Operational Research Society has to do with this novel, but James Ignizio made me feel like I was watching (actually reading) a dry English sitcom. The story was mostly told during a 1997 English road trip by a semi-boring English chap and a dying American but had its roots in a 1943 incident during WWII. I think the author did a good job keeping me awake in a story that was somewhat boring by tweaking my interest in the charm of common English life (if that makes any sense). A lot of sentences were spent on the English breakfast consisting of tea, fried tomatoes, watery scrambled eggs, a ghastly orange juice and a black pudding that turned out to be “congealed pig’s blood wrapped in a length of pig’s intestine.” Also highlighted were the many village pubs serving warm pints of local beer. Doesn’t the food sound great? I didn’t think that two elderly men, one a English birdwatcher (on a secret quest to find the five American survivors of a mysterious WWII B-17 crash) and the other, a dying American, who was trying to find a church depicted in a painting for the sake of burying his wife’s ashes (while driving around the English countryside in a almost 50 year old car), would hold my attention...but it did. Good work by the author.

In 1943, a German bomber parachute a mine over a small village in England. The mine seems to be heading for the church, which was filled with local townspeople listening to Christmas songs from the church choir. Outside the church, two Rolls Royces are parked listening to the concert. Could one of the occupants of the cars be Winston Churchill? If so, what’s he doing there? Meanwhile, a boy (Tommy Hawke in bed with a fever) observes a American B-17 crash outside his yard. He sees five survivors walk from the plane. A tall man with his head bandaged seems to drop something, but can’t find it, and his mates hustle him away from the plane. The boy falls asleep and when he wakes the next day, he tells his mom what he saw. She says, “Tommy, you must have been delirious. An aeroplane certainly did crash into the pasture, as you can plainly see. But it was a German craft, and no one survived...Tommy could hardly believe his ears.” What was she hiding from him and why? When Tommy tried to raise an objection, his mom said, “Tommy, listen carefully to me. You did not see any men climb out of that wreckage. Everyone on board died in the crash.” I thought that this was an excellent opening chapter and set the hook for the rest of the novel.

The novel now switches to 1997. Vince Collesano arrives in England with his wife’s ashes in a urn. Her final request to him was to bury her ashes in the cemetery of a charming church that her mother painted many years ago. Vince is met at the airport by his deceased wife’s cousin, Albert “Bertie” Ambrose, an eccentric semi-recluse birdwatcher. Vince never liked Bertie, but he needs his help in finding the church in the painting. Vince tells Bertie, “...just moments before she passed away she pointed to the painting. Her last words to me were that I bury her there. I only wish she would have been able to tell me just where in the whole of England that little church might be located.” Bertie said, “Don’t you worry, Vince, we’ll find it.” On page 29, the two gentleman head off in Bertie’s 1949 Morris Minor in quest of finding the church in the painting. Is that really Bertie’s quest? I know this novel seems boring, yet the author, James Ignizio, is able to combine the 1943 WWII bomber crash and the 1997 quest to find a church (in a painting) into a rather pleasing tale. Kudos to the author of ten books and The Last English Village, his first novel. I highly recommend this British sitcom clone.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: My favorite British sitcom was a twelve episode comedy in the late 1970s called Fawlty Towers starring John Cleese as Basil and Connie Booth as Basil’s wife, Sybil. They ran a seaside hotel in the fictional town of Torquay. The comical episodes were accompanied by hotel helpers, Polly (the chambermaid) and Manuel (the Spanish waiter). They were sooo funny!

The only British remake sitcom I watched was The Office. Before Steve Carell played Michael Scott, the general manager of a paper company, Ricky Gervais was playing David Brent in a similar role in England.

Of course, my favorite British comedy show was Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969-1974) starring Terry Jones, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, and Terry Gilliam. The show was hilarious!