The Wedding Officer

Anthony Capella

The Wedding Officer deals in that stock plot device of romantic fiction set in wartime: the love affair between foreign soldier and local girl. The rules of the game insist that it start badly. He must resist because the local beauties are a notorious distraction and in any case fraternisation is forbidden. She must resist because local honour requires it and because her childhood sweetheart has usually been killed (on page seven) by the invading army and she must make herself hate them. But slowly the barriers melt away and sexual attraction (and the conventions of the genre) always prevails. Cue happy ending and film deal, possibly with Nicholas Cage playing the lead.

In The Wedding Officer we meet James, a British officer stationed in Naples in 1944. A prig when he first arrives, he soon relaxes and gets in touch with his inner Neapolitan. A measure of this transition is the biscuit tin (for bribes) which starts off determinedly empty but fills as the novel progresses. Enter, at this point, local lovely Livia Pertini to cook for the Allied officers. At first there are the usual obstacles (see above) but soon they are playing hide-the-salami at every opportunity ("then she was guiding him insider her ... like dipping your fingers in olive oil" - Bad Sex Prize awards ceremony, Mr Capella? Right this way, sir).

I may not be the target demographic for this one. For one thing there's the soft focus couple (him in dashing uniform) kissing on the front cover. Then there's the "Richard & Judy" (Daytime TV presenters, I believe, m'lud) endorsement blurb. Nevertheless it's a decent enough read, though uneven in tone. Its last 100 or so pages consist of supposedly gritty war drama but it's not well done. Earlier on, it's a comedy, and perhaps this is where Anthony Capella's strengths lie. "You lick nipples?" enquires Livia politely, eager to practice her English and to learn James' opinion of Naples. Well, I thought it was funny.

Then there's the problem of the stereotypes. In some ways, it's not too bad. Most of the abuse of the local population occurs at the hands of the Allies, not the Germans. "The Germans?" queries the good-hearted James at one point, listening to some Italians describe how soldiers had earlier looted their home. And the response is scornful: "Of course not. You think only the Germans can do anything bad?" But generally the novel's cast is painfully one-dimensional. There isn't a whore in the story who doesn't have a heart of gold, nor a black marketeer who isn't a villain of the highest order, nor a partisan who isn't honest and true. And that's just the Italians.

Capella's reading list at the end acknowledges his debt to Norman Lewis's classic work Naples '44. Capella's novel is fun, fluffy, enjoyable nonsense but it's certainly no classic.