Fabrizio's Passion

M. Wayne Cunningham is a past executive director of the Saskatchewan
Arts Board and the former director of Academic and Career Programs at
East Kootenay Community College.

D’Alfonso calls this splendid picaresque work a recit—something
between a roman (novel) and a nouvelle (short story). Set in Montreal,
it portrays the life and times of Anglo-Italian Fabrizio Notte, a
lovable rascal who is seeking his identity as an artist-filmmaker,
lover, and individual. Fabrizio’s family roots, his childhood
tantrums, and his adolescent adventures are explored, and there are
raucous accounts of his adulterous encounters with his best friend’s
sex-crazed wife. There are also rambling interior monologues of
Fabrizio’s frustrated attempts to secure financial backing for his
film The Choice, a reworking of Sophocles’ Antigone.

D’Alfonso uses a variety of narrative techniques, including letters,
diary entries, film scripts, and a sometimes unheralded switch in
narrators. Particularly memorable are the bawdy sex scenes and the
scenes of family life (e.g., Fabrizio’s father chasing him around in
the wake of some childish peccadillo). D’Alfonso’s all too brief
recit is remarkably intimate and hugely amusing. Like Duddy Kravitz,
Fabrizio Notte could become a Montreal icon.