Rating: 
Summary: A book not to take any more seriously than it takes itself
Review: Just a casual glancing through the various reader reviews, critics quotes, and even the occaisional book jacket summery of Guisepee Di Lampedusa's acclaimed - if not his only - modernist work, The Leopard, can arm even the most inexperienced reader with quite a cache of euphamisms with which to discuss and defend, not only the book itself, but the entire Italian aristocracy until the cows come home. Expressions like "sensous", "magnetic", and "tragicly, though inevitably, fated for decline" all serve to nicely idealize and romanticize an institution that could just as easily have been described, as it was depicted in The Leopard, as "patriarchal", "exploitative", and "intellectually and and culturally bankrupt". Di Lampedusa's portrayal of the Salina household, in all reality, is one that falls somewhere between subtle satire and familial mythology, resting ultimately before the brick and mortar hearth of a playful and loving portrait of the Sicilian Royalty on it's last legs. While Di Lampedusa's conventional, if not beautiful, prose may excell early on at painting hauntingly evocative descriptions of the sometimes desolate, sometimes explosive Italian countryside, the author's insight never really takes flight until his characterization begins to pick up momentum later on in the novel's course. Di Lampedusa's descriptions of Maria Stella's religious absolutions prior to her love making sessesions with the prince strike a chord a wholly authentic chord somewhere between absurd and more and more appropriate, as the reader's understanding of Don Fabrizio grows more complete. She is simultaneously hopelessly out of touch with her family and the politics of her surroundings as well as one of the most insightful and pragmatic characters to be found there. Similarly, her conniving, upstart nephew, Tancredi, is every bit the morally reprehensible status seeker that Di Lampedusa would first paint him out to be, but with just enough optimism and idealistic fervor to frustrate any self-righteous readers from condemning him outright, leaving Tancredi, like so many Di Lampedusa's characters, floating painfully in the fractured limbo of full-color, three-dimensional humanity. Don Fabrizo is, of course, Di Lampedusa's masterpiece here. As the idle and out of touch prince of a domain that seems to alternately extend throughout the whole of the penninsula and shrink down to the size of a closet, depending on which nobles you happen to speak with, Fabrizio is the epitome of a man stranded atop a millenium of culture, wealth and history that he has no hope of ever really understanding. Poignent scenes with the Prince usually revolve around his preference to astronomy, his concubines, and his dog over matters of state and family, scenes which dance the razor-thin line between realistic, human insight and outright slapstick. Whether visiting friends of the family at the neigbhoring estate of Donnafugata or preparing his fallen legacy for his daughter's post-humous justification, Di Lampedusa's Don Fabrizio is, ultimately, neither naive buffoon nor nor sophisticated statesman: he is human, flawed, ignorant, soulful and brave. He is the symbol for a way of life that his generate did not create, but one which they exploited as greedily as any of their parents had. If there is a tragedy to Di Lampedusa's novel, it is that these people were shown no more mercy than the lives of the people whom they so carelessly had tossed about before their fall. And if there is a punch line to it, it is that, sadly, Don Fabrizio never really knew what hit him.
Rating: 
Summary: Strong, sensual and compeling
Review: Lampedusa weaves a beautiful story of the history of the Salinas family of Sciliy. Told against the stark, sun bleached landscape, the Count of Salina (the main character) reflects on the his world past and future. As Italy was becoming one, many cultures/territories were now united but yet the cultural differences remained great. The characters are intriguing and the Count complex. The landscape and life at that time is told with great detail and is extremely interesting. Nuances of classes, wealth etc. are interpeted by the Count as part of the story. I think things get lost in the translation sometimes. The flow at times is jumpy but the story is wonderful and a classic.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and first-rate
Review: Like one of the other reviewers I picked up this book with some misgivings (the jacket blurbs seemed excessively laudatory, which is always suspicious) but instantly fell deep under its spell. The history is just a backdrop for di Lampedusa's sharply perceived characters and scenery. "The Leopard" is not a book about history at all, really. It's a book about death, and about life and love, topics of universal and eternal interest.
Rating:
Summary: Sicilian doom
Review: Love. Of course, love. Flames for a year, ashes for thirty.
And what is time?, but worms building lovenests
in old furniture? And how is it possible to be angry
with anyone, we you know full well that also they
will soon be very dead.
And so it continues! This book is a spectacular read
of Sicilian gloom and doom. Poor Concetta never gets her
Tancredi, who marries beautiful, but bourgois, Angelica.
While Don Fabrizio sort of sees it as signs of the times
that his own daughter Concetta must a lost puppy in this
world.
Surely, Sicily 1860 - but somehow just as much humanity to
all times and in all places.
-Simon
Rating:
Summary: Not just for the Literary Scholars
Review: Most people would discount a book written in the Early part of this century but this is the exception to the rule. A friend of mine read passages from the book (a turn off if there ever was one) but I was immediately struck by the brilliant prose. Now, 'brilliant prose' is a another way of saying extremely good writing but stuck in another age but this is not the case. Forget all the so called 'classics' that your teachers made you read. This is the real thing. It doesn't take a reader long to be gripped by this novel. Unlike the rest of the so called 'classics' this one gets you from about the third page and if you don't get it then...well stick to Stephen King because its a rollercoaster ride of language, character and plot from then on.
Rating:
Summary: a good selection for book group discussion
Review: Other reviews here are complete and to the point. I will only add that the book is a good selection for book group discussion. Although the book is a little slow to get into, most members of our club really enjoyed the melancholy and introspective tone coupled with the evocative and vivid descriptions of 19th Century life in Sicily among the aristocracy. The book is elegantly written, competently translated for the most part, and engaging. Although the reader recognizes the faults of our hero, we care deeply about him. The book is quietly moving, especially the chapter where our hero dies. The work is a historical novel; the Freudian undertones, sybolism, and indirection along with its ironic humor are characteristic of the time period it was written, the late 50's, and not an original component of 19th Century literary style. It's almost as good as a visit to Italy.
Rating:
Summary: "Things must change if they are to remain the same"
Review: Set at the time of the Risorgimento, this novel depicts the decay of an aristocracy challenged by democracy, liberalism, and the unification of Italy. The main character, Prince Don Fabrizio, is a stout Sicilian noble, head of a deep-rooted aristocratic family, who foresees the inevitable changes with skepticism and sees himself as the last representative of an era condemned to oblivion. Tancredi, his much-loved nephew, personifies the new era, and although vested in revolutionary red, openly claims the great paradox: "things must change if they are to remain the same!" This novel is Lampedusa's single literary output that was written when the author was 60 years old. It is a work of art that nears perfection, with subtlety of emotions, with so much literary finesse, a delicacy to be savored.
Rating:
Summary: Perhaps One Must Be Over 50?
Review: The grace and power of this story could be quite overwhelming if it weren't for the cleverness we all adopt while reading it, so that at its end, we are neither shocked nor saddened, but rather challenged to take up our own pathetic cudgels and go at the world ourselves. Or not. A beautful tale.
Rating:
Summary: One of the greatest books I've read
Review: The ideas of this book - the passage of time, idealism vs. pragmatism, responsibility - are truly universal. The beauty of its imagery is pervasive. I can't find a better word to describe it than "timeless".
Rating:
Summary: Revolution and resignation
Review: The Leopard is a story of aristocratic decline in an age of revolution and democracy. It is set in Sicily at the time of the Risorgimento in the mid-nineteenth-century that put the Italian states on the path to unification. Don Fabrizio is a Sicilian aristocrat of German extraction. While Sicily is conquered by the nationalist Redshirts under Garibaldi, he spends his time indulging his interest in astronomy and his passion for women. He tends to his estate, Donnafugata, and holds discussions with his tolerant yet gently disapproving priest. In need of money, his nephew marries the daughter of the village mayor, who also happens to be the local mafia chieftan. Don Fabrizio's world is coming to a close. It is the end of aristocracy and the triumph of the grubby merchants, the middle classes, and the democrats -- the triumph, in short, of the vulgar money-making classes and all they represent. Don Fabrizio's attitude to what is happening around him is one of resignation. On a political and social level, this is disappointing. I wish he would spend less time looking through his telescope and more time organising a resistance. After all, isn't the best antidote to revolution - be it political, religious, social, or sexual - not apathy or aloofness, but counter-revolution? Don Fabrizio's political impotence in the face of savagery is symptomatic of the deeper maladies that later came to infect the ruling class of the West in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Piety gave way to decadence, virility to effeminacy, loyalty to treason; the biggest tragedy by far was the wholesale loss of confidence. But accepting fate is part of the aristocratic ethos to which a nobleman such as Don Fabrizio would adhere, so perhaps I should not be too hard on him. Like all classic stories, The Leopard transcends its historical setting. In this case Lampedusa wrote the story during WWII while Sicily was overrun by Allied troops. Although partly based on the author's own family history, it can also be seen as his reaction to the occupiers' deliberate destruction of Sicily's ancient palaces and estates, not to mention their corrupting notions of liberty and democracy. The story echoes even more closely our present day situation. As the American republic metamorphoses into a tyrannical global empire, and as the revolutionary processes of globalization and Americanization threaten to obliterate traditional Western civilization, the only things we are left with -- like Don Fabrizio -- are memories of a better, nobler age. The Leopard reminds us that change too often equals decline, especially in the modern era. Similarly beguiling is Lampedusa's short story, The Professor and the Siren. In some ways it is an even more haunting tale than The Leopard. It has certainly stuck in my mind all these years since I first read it. The latter book, though, remains an unadulterated classic and is highly recommended.
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