Italy is one of my favourite countries to visit. I love the beautiful terracotta roofed houses, the lemon and olive groves, the vineyards, the Renaissance cities of Florence and Venice, and the romantic city of Rome, and the food! And if I can't be there, I love to read about it.
Lucy Diamond has written the perfect book,
One Night in Italy, and although the book is set around an Italian evening class in Sheffield, the characters dream of going to this wonderful country, and some of them actually do!
The three main characters are:
Sophie who has been called home from Sorrento after spending some years in Italy because her father's had a heart attack and, as she's got nowhere and no one to return to, she becomes the teacher of the Italian class.
Catherine who comes to the class because she's trying to rebuild her life after her twins leave home for university and her husband has been waiting for this moment to tell her that he never loved her and wants a divorce.
Anna, a journalist, who discovers that her father is Italian and wants to go there and find him.
Add sisters, Nita and Phoebe, who want to meet some sexy Italian men; and Roy and Geraldine who are planning a grand tour of Italy for their Ruby Wedding. They make a wonderful cast who support each other and grow together, fuelled by evenings in the local pub after the class is over.
In all this, Lucy Diamond had made great use of dialogue and dialect to draw loveable pictures of each of them for us to enjoy.
It's a sparkling book to read any time and you can even learn a few words of Italian as each chapter is headed up with the title in Italian as well as English!
I love Italy too, Jean, and am currently writing a possibly novella length story set in Venice, one of my favourite places!
ReplyDeleteLovely, Rosemary, I'll look forward to it!
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