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An "immensely satisfying” story (The Guardian) of family, war, art, and betrayal set around an ancient, ancestral home in the Tuscan countryside from the bestselling, award-winning author of Property.
When Jan Vidor, an American writer and academic, rents an apartment in a Tuscan villa for the summer, she plans to spend her break working on a novel about Mussolini. Instead, she finds herself captivated by her aristocratic landlady, the elegant, acerbic Beatrice Salviati Bartolo Doyle, whose family has owned Villa Chiara for generations. Jan is intrigued by Beatrice’s stories of World War II, particularly by the tragic fate of her uncle Sandro, who was mysteriously murdered in the driveway of the villa at the conclusion of the war. Day by day, Beatrice makes Jan privy to her family history.
As years go by and the friendship is sustained by infrequent meetings, Jan finds she can’t resist writing Beatrice’s story. But as she works on the novel, it becomes clear that the villa itself is at risk and that Beatrice is incapable of saving it. Jan understands that she is telling the story of a catastrophe her friend might prefer to conceal. She presses on.
When Jan Vidor, an American writer and academic, rents an apartment in a Tuscan villa for the summer, she plans to spend her break working on a novel about Mussolini. Instead, she finds herself captivated by her aristocratic landlady, the elegant, acerbic Beatrice Salviati Bartolo Doyle, whose family has owned Villa Chiara for generations. Jan is intrigued by Beatrice’s stories of World War II, particularly by the tragic fate of her uncle Sandro, who was mysteriously murdered in the driveway of the villa at the conclusion of the war. Day by day, Beatrice makes Jan privy to her family history.
As years go by and the friendship is sustained by infrequent meetings, Jan finds she can’t resist writing Beatrice’s story. But as she works on the novel, it becomes clear that the villa itself is at risk and that Beatrice is incapable of saving it. Jan understands that she is telling the story of a catastrophe her friend might prefer to conceal. She presses on.
2 Reviews
3.5
Valieee
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Will
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“First the praise, a modern tragedy. The narrator praises the straightforward way the stories were conveyed to her, and that shows in how the book is written. You will never be certain just how it would end. It is complex in its sympathy towards former aristocracy, although it doesn't fully explore the implications of ousting this class. What it does do is personalize class antagonism. Belonging is also important, whether you can be an intruder in a world you feel personally connected to. Critically though, I have never read any of Martin's books. As someone born and raised in Poughkeepsie.. the description of a town cut by a highway and derelect by the abanonding of shops for malls is 100% accurate. This feels like the first experiment in framing a novel as a retelling of family stories. The pacing is occationally slow and sometimes the plot has to double back in order to accomodate the framing. Some leads are never followed, so it feels ever so slightly unfinished, down many roads. The ending however sheds formula and brings such self awareness to the way characters were drawn up, that you can almost overlook the abandoning of characters that had many pages of previous development. People fall in and out of your life, is it artistic to depict this in writing or just a first attempt at novel writing?”
About Valerie Martin
VALERIE MARTIN is the author of eleven novels, four collections of short fiction, and a biography of Saint Francis of Assisi, titled Salvation. She has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as the Kafka Prize (for Mary Reilly) and Britain's Orange Prize (for Property).
Other books by Valerie Martin
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