Have you ever wished for a book that was an easy read and a bit of fun, something you could curl up with on a lazy winter’s day, or enjoy while relaxing in the hot summer sun?

Melita Darling, by Nicholas de Piro, fits the bill perfectly.

The author’s wonderful sense of humour, spiced up with more than a touch of irony, emerges as he benevolently observes Maltese society – particularly the upper classes – through the series of tales and poems that make up this wonderful little book.

As the author himself states in his foreword, he has tried to “choose amusement, distraction and emotion” which are displayed through a nostalgic look at a Maltese world gone by.

The work alternates short stories spanning different historical periods with witty poems that deepen the smiles the tales bring to the reader. The book is beautifully illustrated with works by different Maltese artists.

The stories take us on a journey across the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, featuring grand masters, monsignori, counts, marquises, country folk and even a carpenter and a gilder.

We find improbable names like Fulminio Zammitello, the Teumas de Montepaoli, an Alfonsina Vella Custò and her maid Pelagia, and so many more colourful characters who people de Piro’s delightful world.

The author’s ability to capture fine detail in his descriptions is characteristic of his inimitable style. 

The author’s sense of humour emerges as he observes Maltese society

Mario and Fernanda Castelletti accept the new British way of doing things because “they were sentimentally anti-Napoleon”; naughty Pierina holds her cousin’s fiancé so tightly during a waltz that she makes him feel “so many things he had never felt before”; Maria Lucia fights a stubborn father for her education and independence; a wise grandmother includes a xatrambatra in her granddaughter’s dowry to ensure that evil smells in bed do not disrupt the marriage!

The author informs his readers that three of the stories are true, but all his stories contain particulars that blur truth and fiction and make the stories so endearingly “Maltese”.

It is, however, in his poetry that de Piro excels. The words are carefully chosen to create either fast-paced rhythms or slow tempos that evoke nostalgia. Some poems have a mixture of Maltese and English and one in particular, is written in Maltese.

Many of the poems are tongue-in-cheek and portray a Maltese world of pastizzi, timpani, lace, Paceville and St Paul’s Bay, divas, dashing beaux and simpering maidens. Others are more personal and speak about love and inspiration.

De Piro has written many books, some serious historical studies, others pieces of fiction where his witty observation of Maltese society is both amusing and thought-provoking.

Melita Darling, published by Delicon Books, conjures a world of fantasy that is, at the same time, easily identifiable with the way we are and how we were in the days gone by.