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54
By Wu Ming
Translated from the Italian by Shaun Whiteside
Harcourt 560 pp. $25
Reviewed by Richard Di Dio
Philadelphia Inquirer - Sunday, October 29, 2006
McGuffin: noun; a plot device, often used in films, that motivates characters and advances the story, but has little other relevance to the story itself; Alfred Hitchcock's term, describing a mysterious package in a story set on a Scottish train.
About the only thing you won't find in 54 - the highly entertaining and imaginative Italian best-seller by Wu Ming - is a Scottish train. But you will find a spaghetti-jumble of interconnected stories in settings that range from Italy to Yugoslavia to Hollywood, and with a very unusual group of characters - Cary Grant, Marshal Tito, Grace Kelly, Lucky Luciano, Vietnamese Emperor Bao Dai, and - Alfred Hitchcock.
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