I have banged on a lot about how much I had enjoyed the books from last year from Foundry editions, which have published several of my favourite books from last year. I must admit this is the first from their books this year that I have read. I was grabbed by Chiara Valerio\u2019s bio as she is an editor, writer and a lit blogger, many years ago, and she has published a lot of books. it sis always great when you find a new writer with many books already out for you to read. This book was on the shortlist for the Premio Strega prize and was inspired in part by. The writer is reading one of Georges Simenon\u2019s novels, his Roman Durs, which inspired her.<\/p>\n
\nAnd so Vittoria was the first woman to own a boat space at the dock, an exclusively male club. Every year the film Around the World in 80 Days would be on TV, with David Niven as Phileas Fogg, the man who has bet all his money and has to complete a trip around the world and return, by a specific day and time, to London, to the Reform Club, an exclusive men-only club where he is a member. And he manages it, but he brings a woman with him, the Indian princess he has fallen in love with. After Vittoria bought the boat, the dock started to seem like the Reform Club with neon lights, and Vittoria\u2019s face had a hint of something Indian and, at heart, regal.<\/p>\n
She was a strong female figure in the town with her boat etc!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
As I said, this was inspired by Simenon; it is a mystery in a way he did his mystery in his roman durs, more about the flaws in the human condition and places. So this is more an insight into the small seaside town of Scauri. Those living there there interactions with her, but also the relationships and thoughts of her. Then we need to know how this dead woman ended up in the town all those years ago! \u00a0The seaside town is set in the middle between Rome and Naples, at the remote end of the seaside towns of the area. So when Vittoria, the local chemist, herbalist and all-around woman that everyone knows in this small town, is found dead, drowned in her bath. Lea, the local lawyer, sets about finding out about this woman. She had been in the village for nearly thirty years, but was one of those women everyone turned to. She listened as others poured their hearts out to her. She lived in a villa with Maras, making her herbal recipes, helping people make amazing recoveries from various illnesses over the years. How could a woman who swam every day and was an expert with her boat drown in a bath? Who was this woman? Will Lea learn more after chatting to all the locals about her? Why does she want to know more about her?<\/p>\n
\nVittoria might have become one of those healers you find in little towns who apparently have no skill or purpose but live alongside nature, and not just humans. Despite everyone always asking her all sorts of things, and her real intuition for diagnosis, she had never wanted to be one. She seemed to live a quiet life, staying in the pharmacy for the hours she had to, then spending the rest of her time walking, swimming, reading botanical books, and tending the garden. She liked having people around the house and playing cards. I\u2019m interested in both earthly and heavenly plants, she would say, laughing.<\/p>\n
But she was much more than that to this town!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
This is one of those books that feels like a crime novel but without a detective. It is about small towns and how unsettling a death out of the blue can be, and how someone can fit into a town without anyone ever really knowing who she was! WEho was Vittoria whart had brought her from Rome all those years earlier it focus on those little bonds and tyies that weave together a small town but also how at the heart there could be a black hole of a person that seems to be at the heart of it all but is actually more invisible to those around her for the fact she only listen to those and on the surface was the woman everyone. She was known for her job and her ability to heal people, but what was her past? I get how this was inspired by Simenon; he was great with the ambiguity of human nature, those grey characters in life never black or white. This is about small town relationships and passions, and also that never quite trusting the incomer, even thirty years later! Do you have a favourite novel that is a crime novel, but isn\u2019t, if that makes sense like this?<\/p>\n
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