A richly textured and powerful novel of a family and a nation torn apart by war follows Kate Fenn, who marries a young left-wing Italian doctor and moves to Tuscany, where she becomes imprisoned within a Nazi-Fascist Europe with a brother and brother-in-law on opposing sides, a husband incarcerated due to his socialist ideas, and a young daughter to raise alone.
A spry English woman marries an Italian doctor on the eve of World War II and tries to come to terms with a dual national identity in this plodding historical novel, the American debut of British writer Riviere. Caterina, as she is called in Italy (she thinks of herself as Kate Caterina), lives with her husband, Gabriele D'Alessandria, in a crumbling Renaissance palace in Arezzo. Surrounded by extended family and occupied in raising her young daughter, she has begun to make a place for herself. Then, three days after Germany attacks Poland, Gabriele, an inveterate Socialist, is taken into custody as a political prisoner. For Gabriele's sake, Caterina must maintain good relations with her sister-in-law and one-time best friend, Esmeralda, who has just married a high-ranking Fascist officer: this involves socializing with the Fascist elite. Meantime, she must also worry about her brother, Giles, who is fighting on the side of the Allies. Closest to her is Gabriele's father, Luigi, a sad but wise old man, weary of partisanship and more at ease with leisurely chronicles of the war's events. Riviere's plot encompasses plenty of fascinating historical material, particularly Italy's internal divisions during the war, but his long-winded exposition, minimal dialogue and flat prose sink the story. Much care is put into the development of Caterina and Luigi's characters, but neither quite transcends stereotype, undermined by Riviere's tendency to tell rather than show. For a novel set in a war-torn country, Riviere's tale is strangely lacking in drama. Agent, Emma Parry, Carlisle & Co.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Riviere has written five novels, but this is the one that was chosen as Book of the Year by both the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Mail in London. The author's U.S. debut, it tells the story of a beautiful young Englishwoman, married to a left-wing Italian doctor, who finds herself increasingly alienated in Fascist Italy.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The enchanting woman of the title is English, married to her Italian socialist husband, and the doting mother of a daughter. In the brilliant set piece that opens the novel, set in 1939 Arezzo, Kate's husband's family gathers for the wedding of his sister, Esmeralda, to a man with close ties to Mussolini. The point of view shifts from Kate to her father-in-law to her husband in prison, focusing on her brother Giles, her German mother-in-law, Sonya, or her little daughter, Lisa. The short chapters fill the senses: the beauty of Tuscan summers and the cold of mountain winters; the comfort of food and wine; the relentless wartime agony of not knowing where your loved ones are or how they fare. Kate keeps journals for her husband and brother, filling them headlong with her thoughts and terrors. That same stream-of-consciousness produces a radiance of detail and an intensity of heartfelt sorrow. Riviere has told a tale that would sit proudly next to Mark Helprin's
Memoir from Antproof Case (1995).
GraceAnne DeCandidoCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
