Back to realism here, and to the war -- but not fully, not until almost the very end of "UNPA Nights," when the siren rings out and the fictional-Calvino remembers his duties and abandons Biancone to get back to them.

These stories strike me as illustrating the ordinariness of life under fascism; life may look a little different (the field trip is to a conquered village across the border, or the reason two boys are left on their own is that they're supposed to be on watch for air raids), but the way the people act remains ... unexceptional. Teen boys rummage and pillage Menton, just as they might rampage through an abandoned mall in a suburb.

Biancone is an interesting figure; in "The Avanguardisti in Menton" he's a little unknowable, unaccountable, inexplicable. He appears and disappears. The version in "UNPA Nights" feels like a reduced copy; the fantasy of him has vanished, and you're left with a boy trying to come off as more impressive than he is, more experienced than he is.