What a pleasure to read this book. It must have been quite a project to write something with this much scope, beauty, art, wit, humor and most of all, love. Picking up this book based off a website recommendation last year I had no idea going in what I was getting into.
This is a sweeping story, involving a chosen family of people that gather in both England and Italy. The center stage is for the most part the city of Florence, and the timeframe starts in the early 1900’s and ends near the 1980’s. I particularly liked the writing style, full of beautiful scenes and special moments. One can hope for a few of these special moments in a lifetime – in this book they come along every few pages. The writer really packs in the emotion, and especially focuses on the appreciation of art and beauty, and the formation of love (in all its various ways).
There was something special about the way each character is so heartfelt – with a very few exceptions (Peg and Claude) I was totally invested in them, and ended up cheering for their triumphs. There are a lot of triumphs in this book – more than I think are realistic but eventually I learned to just go with it and enjoy the experience. Of course tragedy sometimes comes up, but this book is much more about the joy of life rather than dealing with the downsides.
So, a great book, and one of the best I’ve read in the last year or so. It scratched my travel itch a little bit – but usually that itch will come back even harder later on.
After a great book I always feel bad for the next one – but I’ve heard good things about Damon Galgut’s The Promise, which is next on my list.
