As I’m currently in love with all things Italian (I'll blame the lovely Carla Coulson for encouraging this addiction!), but
tending to read heavily in the memoir department, I decided to take a sidewards
step when I saw this book recommended on a blog and instead read a novel set in
Italy.
Although the story didn’t grab me in the first chapter or
so, it didn’t take long to get its hooks into me and I really didn’t want to
put it down.
Written in two time periods – the end of WWII and the
swinging sixties/seventies the story takes place in England and Italy. Starting with an assassination it sets the
scene immediately that there is more to this story than meets the eye.
Alba, an extremely attractive young woman in her twenties,
who lives for the moment, uses men for sexual companionship and odd-jobs but
doesn’t let herself get involved emotionally with any of them, and manages to
live on her allowance rather than work.
She lives on her father’s houseboat in London (called the Valentina) and
grew up in a comfortably well off family in rural England with her father, Thomas,
her stepmother Margo (“the Buffalo”) and
step siblings.
Apart from knowing her mother Valentina was Italian and that she died
shortly after her birth at the end of WWII, Valentina is a mystery to Alba as
she is not a topic of conversation and indeed is never referred to by the
family. In a rather spoilt-brat style,
she tries to get her father to impart details about Valentina and squarely lays
the blame on her step mother for wiping out her mother’s memory.
In an effort to find
out more, her novelist neighbour suggests the use of her literary agent, Fitz,
as a pretend boyfriend (who is already in love with her from a distance) as he
is the sort of ‘suitable’ young man her family would approve of and her father
may indulge more information to another man about the mysterious Valentina.
The information is enough to set Alba to discover more about
her mother in Italy – specifically the small village of Incantellaria, on the
Amalfi Coast. In the process of
discovering her mother’s story in which she sees some uncomfortable
similarities between them both, she learns the value of community, the love of
family and we see Alba finally grow up.
The story could have happily ended a number of times in the
latter quarter of the book, with a satisfactory “happy” ending, but the author
drew it out more and personally I was a little unsettled with the actual
ending, but it didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the story overall.
The descriptions of Italy appear very accurate, and you can
feel the heat, the dryness and the light of the Amalfi Coast in summer as you
read. The characters were also brought
to life with descriptive writing. I was
surprised to learn that the author, Santa Montefiore isn’t Italian, but
Argentinian/English and this was her first published novel that was set in
Italy.
Overall, an enjoyable romance with enough action, suspense
and tragedy to keep the story rolling along.
