The Don Camillo books were widely reviewed as they were published in English, and I have copies of many of these reviews. I hope someday to manage to enter here some good quotes (and there are lots) to support what follows, but in the meantime here's a general summary of what's in them:

• The English-language reviews I have of Guareschi's books are, on the whole, very positive. Now, I don't suppose that will surprise any of you fans. :-)  But I do suppose that the statistics are a bit skewed by the fact that some who disliked the books may have chosen to express their distaste by declining to review them at all... however, those critics' views will simply have to remain unaccounted for.

• The earlier books enjoy the most enthusiastic reviews. Again, perhaps, not a surprise: series fiction always has a harder time sustaining the praise of the critics. By the time of the fourth Don Camillo book (Don Camillo Takes the Devil by the Tail), reviews were shorter, and words like "tired" appeared in some of them.

• Among those who actively disliked the books, here were some of the complaints raised:

  • some leftists took offense at what they saw as the patronizing portrait of Peppone, a communist whom we are encouraged to see as a "good guy" precisely because he isn't a model communist (he has retained too much respect for religion, for one thing)
  • some devout Catholics were also bothered by Peppone, or rather by the fact that Peppone and Don Camillo, though representatives of rival camps, were portrayed as so fundamentally alike. They worried that Guareschi was implying that it really doesn't matter where your allegiance lies--that "all beliefs amount to the same thing, in the end"
  • these folks also tended to be less than enamored of scenes in which the rough-and-ready priest converses in slang with a Lord Who seems far too willing to overlook some of his sins (the slang was cringed at by a few of the non-religious reviewers, too)
  • and then there was the odd Scrooge who deemed GG insufficiently serious (purveyor of a "Cold War Lite") or manipulatively sentimental