Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%
Fiction

Shadowland

Candle Life by Venero Armanno

by Kerryn Goldsworthy
May 2006, no. 281

Candle Life by Venero Armanno

Vintage, $32.95 pb, 368 pp

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

Deep under the streets of Paris, the tunnels, chambers and galleries of the catacombs run in all directions, some of them filled with the skeletons of the dead who were displaced in the eighteenth century from the overflowing cemeteries of Paris and moved here, their bones stacked six feet high and six feet deep along the walls. During World War II, the chambers and tunnels were used by the French Resistance and also by the Nazis. These days, tourists queue peacefully to totter down the delicate, steep, spindly steps into the underworld darkness, nervously following the guides through what feels like miles of tunnels. The mystery of the dripping noise is solved when you come back up into the sunlight to find your clothes streaked with the dissolving lime of the underworld.

 


Continue reading for only $10 per month.
Subscribe and gain full access to Australian Book Review.

Already a subscriber? .
If you need assistance, feel free to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..



Candle Life by Venero Armanno

Vintage, $32.95 pb, 368 pp

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.


From the New Issue

‘Weather’

by Dženana Vucic

Apple in China: Apple in the world by Patrick McGee

by Stuart Kells

Science Under Siege: Defending science from dark forces by Michael Mann and Peter Hotez

by Ian Lowe

You May Also Like

Prime Cuts by Angus Gaunt

by Dan Toner

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.

Submit comment