In the annals of great literature, Malta's one potential claim to fame is that it might have been the location of Calypso's island in The Odyssey; apart from that, this tiny, windswept island midway between Italy and Libya makes itself scarce on the fictional front. But Nicholas Rinaldi brings it front and center in his remarkable second novel, The Jukebox Queen of Malta, and if his descriptions of the place leave you cold, his characters won't. Set during the early years of World War II, the story begins with the arrival of American soldier Rocco Raven, late of Brooklyn, during an air raid. While running from an attacking Messerschmitt, Raven is rescued by Jack Fingerly, a shadowy character who may--or may not--be an Army intelligence officer. To Rocco, a car mechanic in civilian life with a taste for Melville, Nietzsche, and Edgar Allan Poe, nothing about Malta makes sense--except his feelings for Melita Azzard, the eponymous heroine whom he meets during one of the incessant bombings that punctuate life on the island: There was a freedom to the way she moved, a confidence and self-assurance. She paused to look up as yet another Stuka swept by, this one trailing a plume of black smoke from its fuselage. Then she looked back, over her shoulder, and saw him coming along half a block behind her. Though the romance between Rocco and Melita is at the heart of the novel, Rinaldi has more than wartime love on his mind. His island is a marvelous place populated by unhappy pilots who get promoted every time they're shot down; repairmen who have turned jukeboxes into a wartime industry; old men who dream of a "Greater Malta" composed of an annexed Italy ("Sicily we don't want, it's too full of thugs and mafiosi. Rome we give to the pope, but the rest of Italy is ours"); and ordinary people who carry on their quotidian lives in the midst of not-so-quotidian carnage. There's a dreamy, disturbing quality to this novel, as though Catch-22 and Alice in Wonderland met and married. Rocco blames it on the island: "Malta was doing this--everything shifting, turning, uncertain"; the reader, however, knows better. This jewel of a novel owes everything to Nicholas Rinaldi's tilted imagination and considerable prose talents. --Alix Wilber


From Publishers Weekly
In fluid prose and with subtle psychological insight, Rinaldi (Bridge Fall Down) writes of wartime love as a kind of complex anesthetic, or as a soul-saving form of amnesia during violent times. During the early years of WWII, U.S. Army Corporal Rocco Raven is sent to the small Mediterranean island of Malta on a vague intelligence mission concerning wire taps. Because of its key geographic position between Sicily and Africa, Malta has been subjected to daily Italian and German bombardments, and it seems that the only person keeping his head clear of falling rubble is Roccos commanding officer, shifty Jack Fingerly, who dresses inappropriately in a Florida sports shirt and disappears when the going gets bad. Walking along pitted streets lined by gutted buildings, Rocco meets and immediately falls in love with Melita Azzard, a beautiful, green-eyed Maltese woman who drives a pink Studebaker hearse, delivering her cousin Zammits handmade jukeboxes to the many bars that cater to English and American troops. Rocco learns Maltese history from Nardu Camilleri, whose national pride drives him to vainly shoot at enemy planes with his outdated rifle. As the conflict accelerates, Rocco and Melita occasionally manage to escape, driving through Maltas rocky terrain and swimming naked in the ocean, and Rocco hopes for a future that sanctifies their love. Readers may find echoes of Louis De Bernieress Correllis Mandolin here, in the juxtaposition of local history, island romance and senseless violence, but Rinaldis voice is distinct in its honest portrayal of a peoplelong deprived of food, information and entertainmentstruggling to reconnect to the world. While sometimes the plot momentum slows with long-winded dialogue, this is a compelling tale of lovers straining to hear the music through the din of a war-ravaged planet. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Although influenced by Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Rinaldi's World War II novel stands on its own unique merits. Fantastical with a touch of dark humor, it's both a moving love story and a gripping portrait of a tiny island under siege. (LJ 5/1/99) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Tom Drury
Just when you think there are no new genres, along comes ... Nicholas Rinaldi with what might be called an incendiary-pastoral novel of life during the Axis bombardment of Malta, 60 miles south of Sicily.


The New York Times, Richard Bernstein
...a funny, melancholy, romantic, disturbing, character-rich window on the war.


From Booklist
Rinaldi's second novel, a wartime love story set in Malta during the German-Italian siege of 1942, follows the serendipitous military life of Rocco Raven, an army radioman from Brooklyn, sent to Malta by mistake to work for the deep-secret branch of army intelligence. There he is under the command of the shady and mysterious Fingerly, whose underground connections run from Gibraltar to Cairo and who eventually has Rocco unknowingly spy on the British. The real tale is Rocco's relationships with the islanders, especially Melita, with whom he falls in love. Throughout the island, Melita repairs jukeboxes, made by her older cousin Zammit, who uses whatever material he can scavenge from the bombing raids. With the ever-increasing shortages and imminent death from the Italian and German bombers, the novel evokes a sense of fatalism without falling back on the usual war-story triteness. And one is never so comfortable with Rocco and Melita's love affair as to decide beforehand that it is either doomed or triumphant because the novel's reality, the war, transcends those notions. Frank Caso


From Kirkus Reviews
The influences of Joseph Heller's classic Catch-22 and Louis de Bernieres' recent Corelli's Mandolin are rather too blatantly present in this otherwise well-constructed and quite likable second novel by poet and author Rinaldi (Bridge Fall Down, 1985). The story recounts the awkward coming-of-age of Corporal Rocco Raven, a young Brooklynite assigned to an intelligence unit based on the island of Malta, under German and Italian air attack, in 1942. Rocco is an engaging innocent, a well-meaning Candide (or Yossarian, for that matter) who can't find the Major to whom he's supposed to report, can't understand the complex wheeler-dealer patois of his superior officer, Captain (later Major) Fingerlyand can't resist the ripe erotic allure of Melita Azzard, the forthright Maltese girl who delivers and services the jukeboxes her resourceful cousin Zammit peddles to bars that cater to American and British military men. Rocco's brief encounter with Melita, inevitably destined to end when his unit is reassigned, is charmingly portrayedand both the wry energy and the bittersweet transience of their union are paralleled by several beguiling comic creations, including cousin Zammit's hopeless infatuation with the reigning Miss Sicily, the combative fury of an indignant villager (Nardu Camillen) who loudly celebrates Malta's (nonexistent) military prowess, and the paradoxical lust for life exhibited by US bomber pilot Tony Zebra, ``an intuitive genius, with a nose better than radar and an uncanny knack for knocking planes down.'' Yet beneath the manic comedy here runs a steady undercurrent of destructiveness: the bombs never stop falling, and the end of Rocco's idyll looms unmistakably ahead. If Heller hadn't existed, we might be calling this a pretty terrific novel. Then again, in a universe without Catch-22, it's doubtful that The Jukebox Queen of Malta could even have been written. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
Richard Russo author of Straight Man and Nobody's Fool I hope this year will offer us another novel as smart and hilarious and magical as Nicholas Rinaldi's The Jukebox Queen of Malta, but I'm not holding my breath.


Book Description
The Jukebox Queen of Malta is an exquisite and enchanting novel of love and war set on an island perilously balanced between what is real and what is not. It's 1942 and Rocco Raven, an intrepid auto mechanic turned corporal from Brooklyn, has arrived in Malta, a Mediterranean island of Neolithic caves, Copper Age temples, and fortresses. The island is under siege, full of smoke and rubble, caught in the magnesium glare of German and Italian bombs. But nothing is as it seems on Malta. Rocco's living quarters are a brothel; his commanding officer has a genius for turning the war's misfortunes into personal profit; and the Maltese people, astonishingly, testify to the resiliency of the human spirit. When Rocco meets the beautiful and ethereal Melita, who delivers the jukeboxes her cousin builds out of shattered debris, they are drawn to each other by an immediate passion. And, it is their full-blown affair that at once liberates and imprisons Rocco on the island. In this mesmerizing novel, music and bombs, war and romance, the jukebox and the gun exist in arresting counterpoint in a story that is a profound and deeply moving exploration of the redemptive powers of love.


About the Author
Nicholas M. Rinaldi teaches literature and creative writing at Fairfield University in Connecticut.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

From the heralded author of Bridge Fall Down comes this magical, mesmerizing love story in the tradition of Catch-22 and Corelli's Mandolin.

The year is 1942 and Rocco Raven, intrepid auto mechanic from Brooklyn, arrives in Malta as the wireless operator for a small American liaison team. Rocco knows nothing of the Mediterranean island's rich history -- its Neolithic caves, Copper Age temples, and fortresses built by the Knights of St. John. He knows only that the Germans and Italians are battering the place with bombs night and day, and as he stumbles onto the tarmac in the thick of an air raid, he sees little more than smoke and magnesium glare -- and heaps of rubble.

But nothing is as it seems on Malta. Rocco's barracks are a brothel; his commanding officer is an unparalleled genius who turns the war's misfortunes into personal profit; and the Maltese people, astonishingly, live as though there is no war -- dancing, drinking, laughing, loving. When, within days of his arrival, Rocco's barracks are bombed, he wanders deliriously through the devastated streets of Valletta until he sees an apparition -- a beautiful, ethereal woman. She is Melita, who spends her days delivering the jukeboxes her cousin builds out of shards of glass and twisted metal left in the wake of the bombings. Their connection is passionate and instantaneous, and they embark upon a tumultuous love affair despite the ruin around them. It seems Rocco has found a reason to live, a reason to fight. But the passing months of starvation, the deaths of friends and comrades, and the endless shower of bombs threaten to undo him. Rocco will do anything to escape the horror -- including jeopardizehis love for Melita, and his very life.

The Jukebox Queen of Malta is an exquisite and enchanting novel, an account of love and war set on an island perilously balanced between what is real and what is not, with characters who test -- and testify to -- the resiliency of the human spirit. Music and bombs, romance and war, the jukebox and the gun exist in arresting counterpoint in this profound and deeply moving exploration of the redemptive powers of love.

FROM THE CRITICS

Richard Bernstein - The New York Times Book Review

...[A] funny, melancholy, romantic, disturbing, character-rich window on the war....Rinaldi handles the love affair between Rocco and Melita with a patient sort of prudence and around it weaves a marvelous tapestry of Malta trapped in the ludicrous drama of war....Rinaldi follows events on Malta to a moving and satisfying end in a novel that upholds a literary tradition of the war and adds to it as well.

Publishers Weekly

In fluid prose and with subtle psychological insight, Rinaldi (Bridge Fall Down) writes of wartime love as a kind of complex anesthetic, or as a soul-saving form of amnesia during violent times. During the early years of WWII, U.S. Army Corporal Rocco Raven is sent to the small Mediterranean island of Malta on a vague intelligence mission concerning wire taps. Because of its key geographic position between Sicily and Africa, Malta has been subjected to daily Italian and German bombardments, and it seems that the only person keeping his head clear of falling rubble is Roccos commanding officer, shifty Jack Fingerly, who dresses inappropriately in a Florida sports shirt and disappears when the going gets bad. Walking along pitted streets lined by gutted buildings, Rocco meets and immediately falls in love with Melita Azzard, a beautiful, green-eyed Maltese woman who drives a pink Studebaker hearse, delivering her cousin Zammits handmade jukeboxes to the many bars that cater to English and American troops. Rocco learns Maltese history from Nardu Camilleri, whose national pride drives him to vainly shoot at enemy planes with his outdated rifle. As the conflict accelerates, Rocco and Melita occasionally manage to escape, driving through Maltas rocky terrain and swimming naked in the ocean, and Rocco hopes for a future that sanctifies their love. Readers may find echoes of Louis De Bernieress Correllis Mandolin here, in the juxtaposition of local history, island romance and senseless violence, but Rinaldis voice is distinct in its honest portrayal of a peoplelong deprived of food, information and entertainmentstruggling to reconnect to the world. While sometimes the plot momentum slows with long-winded dialogue, this is a compelling tale of lovers straining to hear the music through the din of a war-ravaged planet.

Library Journal

Although influenced by Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Rinaldi's World War II novel stands on its own unique merits. Fantastical with a touch of dark humor, it's both a moving love story and a gripping portrait of a tiny island under siege. (LJ 5/1/99) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Tom Drury - The New York Times Book Review

...[A]n incendiary-pastoral novel of life during the Axis bombardment of Malta . . . may remind readers of Catch-22. But the similarities are leavened by contrasts....[A] vividly rendered cast of characters...

Richard Bernstein - The New York Times Book Review