Reading In Italy

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]Well, hello and an extremely warm welcome to my channel. My name's Louise.

[00:00:04]I love musing, waffling on about books.

[00:00:06]A warm welcome if you're a returning viewer, and an equally warm welcome if you're watching my channel for the very first time. Um, I'm just giggling because as well as musing, I love to travel when I get the chance. So, you'll see that I'm not at home. Um, I'm actually in the middle of Verona in a beautiful apartment. Um, but being this time of year in Italy, there's quite a lot of building work going on. So, I've just had to wait patiently while the drilling stopped. So, um until the drilling stopped. So, apologies. I can hear it starting up again now, but hopefully hopefully you can't. Um so, I promised I would talk about the books that I chose in my previous video about holiday books and holiday reading. Um and we've been here a few days now and the first day, um the weather wasn't brilliant. So, uh, but since then it's been lovely, as you can see. Um, so I've been doing plenty of holiday reading.

[00:01:02]We, um, always on this sort of holiday, I'll have at least one book in my bag, or usually two, cuz I usually carry my husbands around as well. Um, so I've already finished reading Kiara Valyrio's The Little I Knew. And can I say before anything else, I just think these foundry editions are beautiful. Um, not only does it look lovely, but it's got the most wonderful sort of smooth paper.

[00:01:30]So, it's just been a treat to hold and read. Um, which I know it, you know, shouldn't matter, but it really does matter, I think, the way that a book feels in your hands. Um, now, Kiara Valyrio apparently is a is a big best-selling author in Italy. She writes literary fiction. Um, and I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I really loved it.

[00:01:54]Um, it's quite quirky. It's I think she's got a really unique uh writing style certainly as evidenced in this book. So, in this book, she adopts the persona of Leah um who is an avocado, a a lawyer, and oh, the drilling started.

[00:02:11]You can probably appreciate it now.

[00:02:12]Anyway, I'm going to have to plow on because at some point I need to go out.

[00:02:16]Um anyway, so she she's a lawyer in this small town called Scourry on the sort of between Rome and Naples. Um and one of her friends um is found, Victoria is found um dead in in the bath and although she's in her early 60s, it's really unexpected. She's very healthy.

[00:02:40]She swims every day. Um, and Leah can't sort of let herself settle. Um, she's sort of concerned that there hasn't been a proper postmortem, but it's not really a book about it's not sort of a thriller or a sort of murder mystery at all. It's much more about how a small town reacts to an event like this. Um, but Leah is really unsettled and I think particularly because when Victoria died, Leah wasn't in Scarry. She'd actually left her children for a couple of nights uh with with her um in-laws and she and her husband had gone off somewhere else for a little trip away for a couple of nights. So, I think there's an element of sort of guilt that she wasn't around at the time, even though she probably wouldn't have seen necessarily seen Victoria that day. Um, and it's all kind of slightly intertwined with the fact that she's dealing with a a legal case where two young men have been um have sort of attack. They've been involved in a brawl, a fight. One of them threw a bottle at the other. Um and so this other lawyer um called Ponte Corvo, another avocado, also arrives in town to negotiate, but there's much more interconnection than between them than appears at first. So there is quite a bit of intrigue, but what I what I really loved about it was the way that it looks so closely at female relationships. The men I fel felt were sort of quite in the background. So Leah's husband with whom she seems to have a very strong marriage. Uh she speaks on the whole very respectfully about him. Um is not really present in the novel very much. Um and and it does focus very much on Victoria and the young woman Mara who lives with Victoria. Well, she's not that young, but she was young when they initially arrived in the town. Um and that's the other thing. Victoria and her friend who lives with her um didn't grow up in Scourry and pretty much everybody else in the novel um has grown up there because it's a small town drama and I thought the way that that relationships within the town were captured. You know, people acquaintances from school, friends from school, um was so true to life. I mean, it's probably a similar size to the town I grew up in. um and I can sort of really recognize some of the behaviors um in in the novel. The other thing that I found really interesting and I was thinking about this before I you know started waffling on um was that the style of this novel I think is really hard to describe. It's it's really individual and she's created this voice for Leah which is just very slightly rambling um in the way that we do in real life.

[00:05:42]You know, you re I really felt as if I was genuinely in this woman's head because occasionally you'll be in the even towards the end of a paragraph there'll be a sudden shift and you're like where did that come from? But of course, that's kind of what the thought process, you know, we have is like. So, I thought I'd just read you a little bit, drilling permitting, out there. Um, just to give you a flavor of it, but it's it's definitely quite quirky and unusual. I really like it.

[00:06:09]This is towards the end of the novel, actually. Um, and this is Luigi is Leah's husband.

[00:06:16]Luigi was right. The town's memory spreads out. The town's memory has a thousand intersections. The town's memory is like plants. The town's memory has roots that share information. The town's memory is inexhaustible.

[00:06:32]Time after time, it's un unreliable, but it's always accurate. While I was thinking about the town's memory, I tripped, dropped my bag, and put out my hands. But my elbows gave way, and I fell flat on my face on the ground. The outstretched hand ready to help to meet my ready to help me to my feet again was attached to the thin sneering face of Filamina.

[00:06:57]Perhaps she was sneering because it's funny to see someone fall over. Perhaps because me being the one to fall made up for her for offending her in some way I wasn't aware of or because it just gave her some small miserable satisfaction.

[00:07:11]After all, we'd never liked each other even at school. Um, and I just, yeah, I just love that. I love the way she writes. Now, this was translated by um, Alsa Wood. And I think the translation is seamless. I'm not I'm not aware of the mechanics of that absolutely at all.

[00:07:28]Just see, I've got this little pediment thing sitting on the top of my head like a hat. Uh, it's a little bit distracting, but never mind. So, anyway, I finished that and I'm halfway through um, The Enchanted April by uh, Elizabeth Vonam, and I'm absolutely loving this as well. It's it's very different. It's such a both books written by women, but this one um was published in 1922.

[00:07:52]Um so, you know, nearly 100 years apart.

[00:07:55]And um oh my goodness, the the Elizabeth vonim's writing style. This is the second book of hers I've read. It's so crisp and clear and I'm just finding it really Riley entertaining. Um I keep smiling as I read it. It's lovely. It's a real insight into women's lives, I think, in in the 1920s, particularly women of a certain type. So, um, it starts with a woman who's in her her club. She lives in Hamstead. Um, and she clearly is, you know, a respectable woman, but not very wealthy, but she does have some savings. And she sees an advert in the Times um for this uh castle with Wisteria in uh Italy, and she's always, you know, she's just just the thought of it fills her with kind of hope. and um and so she devises this kind of plan to allow herself to go and rent this place, but she needs somebody else to share it because she can't afford to rent it on her own. Um and she also kind of needs an excuse to go there as well because she's married. Um and and she manages to achieve it, of course. So she ends up in this castle and the whole description of the the arrival, the journey to get there is just marvelous. and these two women who've never really left London traveling together initially. Um uh and it it it's also so interesting in terms of their attitudes towards their husbands. So there's the two women who travel together and then when they get there there are two other women who they've briefly met in London. One of whom is a lady and the other who is this very kind of forceful quite ferocious widow woman who's older. she's in her 60s and the other three are all I think in their late 20s, early 30s. Um, so I just love I mean they're thought processes for me almost are the sort of thought process that processes that I think we would now associate perhaps with middle age rather than some women in their late 20s and 30s because of course you know I think because women um were repressed they didn't you know they're quite naive in many ways uh they're not used to standing up for themselves. They're not used to doing things on their own. But the other thing about this book, so I just I think the relationships are brilliant and I can't wait to see how these four women are going to get on in this place together. So I'm really looking forward to I think I'll probably finish this book today because I'm enjoying it so much I'm going to take it out with me in a minute. Um, but the other thing that that I'm loving, especially because I'm in Italy at the moment, and actually this novel is set probably, I don't know, about 100 miles or so from where I'm staying, um, on the that that you know, I'm in Verona and this is on the coast near Genua. Um, but it's northern Italy and it's a similar time of year. Well, it is the same time of year. It's April. Um, and I was stood admiring the wisteria yesterday, uh, that was growing, rambling along this garden wall. Um, so, so the description of the landscape and the plants and the setting is just stunning and the interior of the castle itself. I'm loving all the different rooms and the, you know, the drawing rooms and so on and the dining room and the Italian characters, the the staff who are there to look after them. It's like staying in a hotel really. Um, but yeah, I just think it's I almost part of me almost wishes it I'd read it at home. I might listen to it or watch the film. A lot of you lovely people have recommended the film because um because I think it would immediately whisk me back here. Uh you know, if you if you've not had the opportunity to go to Italy, I think reading this book will give you a really good sense of certainly what the landscape uh and the flora and fauna are like. So yeah, I'll return at some point um to report back on the rest of this book and whatever it is I happen to pick up next.

[00:12:08]So I've never had that happen when I'm recording before. I've just had to wait for quite a noisy ferry to board its passengers and leave before I hit the record button. Um so here I am sat on my hotel balcony. That's Lake Garder you can see behind me. And uh I thought we're off home tomorrow, so I thought I'd fill you in on the last of my reading. Sorry if there's a lot of background noise, but this is the quietest spot I could find. Um so I finished um reading The Enchanted April, and it did not disenchant at any point.

[00:12:41]I think I was about halfway through when I last reported on it. And um I just found the whole thing utterly, utterly charming. There were things that happened that I didn't predict. Even though in some ways the plot is, you could argue having read it, the plot's predictable, but actually during the course of reading it, I didn't find that at all. And I just didn't want to put it down. um on reflection. I think for me it's mostly a book about the importance of friendship and how important it is to open your self up to people, to not shut yourself off, to not judge people um by the first thing they say or the way they look um or their, you know, their personal circumstances and background. I think there's some really strong messages about that in here and I think it's a very generous spirited and hopeful book. um absolutely perfect book as it turns out to take on holiday. So um I'm very grateful and I can absolutely see now why so many of you lovely lot have such a strong affection for this book. I'm definitely going to go home and watch the film as many of you have suggested that I should do.

[00:13:52]So the other book that um I've been reading um is the coent of water by Abraham.

[00:13:59]Now, again, lots of you have read this book and really loved it, and I totally see why. I only started it yesterday, and look, I'm already well over a third of the way into it. I know I'm on holiday, but that's good going for me.

[00:14:11]Um, and I just think it's a delicious, wonderful, beautiful book. Um, it's set in southern India, uh, in Kerala, and you know, the whole sort of location, the scene setting is utterly beautiful.

[00:14:29]Uh, and there's lots and lots of different places in this book. I also found myself in Glasgow. Um, and for Gay, he just seems to be able to conjure up place really well, both internal and external um, spaces. I'm really enjoying that.

[00:14:45]So, it's almost like, you know, you're traveling to these amazing places. But the cast of characters is just fabulous.

[00:14:52]Um the story initiates in 1900 with a young girl who's about 12 years old and she is being taken off to marry a much much much older man. He's at least two decades older. She's never met him before. And I loved the scene right at the beginning. I was completely hooked when they go off to the wedding and he runs away and has to be brought back. I won't tell you why. Um and this book, you know, it starts with this young girl going to marry an older man. And I had imagined the plot was going to take a particular trajectory as a result of that. And it absolutely doesn't do that.

[00:15:26]And there are so many moments so far in this novel where I have almost gasped out loud because what I was expecting to happen didn't happen or something really unexpected uh happens to a character. I don't know if you can hear the bells going and another boat coming past. Apologies for the background noise. Um so yeah, there lots and lots of twists and turns. It's one of those novels where the narrative will be in one place with one set of characters and then you get a whisked away somewhere else and um and you're really grumpy because you want to stay with the plot that you're in and the characters you're in and then you come across this new plot and new characters and you get invested in them and gradually of course all the characters are moving closer and closer together. Um, but I have to say probably the most appealing thing about this novel for me is the fact that Vasey himself is a is a very um what's the word? Highly acclaimed doctor in America.

[00:16:29]And I am loving the descriptions of various sort of medical procedures, operations, the human body, the things that are possible, the things that are not possible. There's a lot in this book about progress and what progress means.

[00:16:45]Um especially when you're looking at a country that was you know um buried under colonialism for so long and you know myths about you know the surgical ideas in here that the Indians knew about in 700 AD and uh you know we the English only discovered in the uh 18th century. And I love the way that he's highlighting that. And um having done a little bit of dig because it's the kind of book where I want to find out more about the writer. So having done a bit of digging about him as well, he's very much um a doctor who believes in getting to know the patients, examining the patients uh physically, which of course is something that's gone out of fashion rather with scans and so on. And so there's an element of that, the importance of that that's being told in this story as well.

[00:17:39]Um, and the um the difference between, you know, the the interconnectedness of psychological and physical health. Um, and and because he's a medic, you know, I feel like I'm learning a lot as well as I read. So yeah, I I can't put it down. Um, I'm actually really glad I'm going to be sat at an airport tomorrow for several hours because I can I know the time will fly by as I'm reading this book. So hopefully um I'm hoping I'll get a chance to report back on the rest of the book before I dart off to London for the Women's Prize um short list event um later this week. We shall see.

[00:18:23]But that's going to be my um endeavor.

[00:18:26]We'll we'll find out. Bye.

[00:18:31]So, I'm back home now after my lovely Italian sjourn. Um, and uh I'm in my library and I'm mulling over this book.

[00:18:41]I finally finished it this morning and I am utterly utterly bereff.

[00:18:47]Um, the water has swilled and sloshed around this book and it's slloshing around in my head. Um, I absolutely loved the foregrounding in this novel of really strong women. I love it when men do that in their writing. I feel felt like the female characters were kind of much much stronger than the male. Um, but I also loved the unashamedly romantic sort of the portrayal of um, male ability to love female in this as well. Um, sort of unabashed, unashamed love and devotion. Um, which I don't think I see often enough perhaps or or generously enough in in writing. Um, I love the way it tackles social injustice. It takes a look at the cast system. Um, the the whole sort of medicine thing. I know I mentioned this before, but particularly the the power of medicine in relation to genetic conditions um you know, inherited um uh conditions. Uh I found that yeah, extraordinary.

[00:20:04]And there's just a deep deep deep humanity to this novel. Um I the storytelling is phenomenal. The twists, the turns.

[00:20:16]Um I'm I really am quite shaken by it and I yeah I think this will end up being one of my favorite books uh of the year and possibly of all time.

[00:20:27]So, um, please let me know below, uh, what you're reading. Um, particularly if you're off on a holiday or you're having a break from work. Um, what sort of books do you like to read to transport you to other places?

[00:20:43]Um, and, uh, yeah, I hope you're all reading wonderful things and look forward to talking to you again very, very soon. Bye.