Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsWonderful, beautiful, heart warming, magnificent writing. Read it please!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 July 2022
Every so often a novel comes along which impresses one so much with its wonder and beauty that one is moved and, in my case at least, one finds it difficult to discover suitable words of praise as to do it justice. This is a truly wonderful book. The writing is magnificent and beyond compare of anything I have read in many a year let alone month. The story is wonderfully tender and heart warming and free of the conflicts and tension that seem to be de rigueur these days, even in so called “feel-good” stories. Trust me when I say this is a feel-good story beyond compare and it was an absolute joy to read.
I am not going to try to analyse the book; this leads to spoilers, and I feel it would be crass. I do not look for meaning. I take from it what I do and, from this, I took a great deal and shall remember it for a long time.
My only negative comment is that I was slightly disappointed with the last phase of the book covering Evelyn’s early trip to Florence and the last act, as it were, back in the present. Somehow the writing did not flow the same in this part and, though it was lovely and poignant, the very final segment felt too short and unfinished.
It also helps, I feel, if you knew a little Italian and something about art. I know neither and so the “in-jokes” were lost on me. I am sure you’d get even more, possibly a lot more, from the book if you knew about these things. Even then it should not put off those like me who are ignorant.
The lack of quotation marks for the speech is a modern technique I do not like, but I did not find it affected the flow or my understanding of who said what to whom. I admit that the parrot was somewhat fantastical, but the beautiful writing and the story and characters were too good and too wonderful to make that matter.
This is the type of book I love and, unless you are cold, unsentimental and lacking any emotion whatever, you too will love it too.