The Irish signorina : divertimento /

A finalist for England's Booker McConnell Prize, O'Faolain (The Obedient Wife) writes with sensuous elegance and an awareness of human fallibility. Her new novel begins when a young Irish woman, Anne Ryan, arrives at the Florentine villa of Marchesa Niccolosa Cavalcanti. Anne's late mother had been a hired companion to the Marchesa's daughter, also now dead, which is why the guest accepted the invitation from the old and ailing lady. Longing for a romance of her own, Anne mainly wants to find out more about the affair between Mrs. Ryan and Cosimo, the Italian she had talked of often and wistfully. Guido, the Manchesa's married son, pursues Anne and she falls in love with him, ignoring warnings from Niccolosa. These and other arresting characters in the novel become embroiled in situations arising from political and familial intrigue. O'Faolain's tart, taut prose will mesmerize readers, but they could be frustrated by the rather ambiguous conclusion. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Anne Ryan's return to the Italian villa where her mother served as a companion precipitates a romance with her mother's former lover, involves her in an Italian political crisis, and ends with her inheritance of the villa. O'Faolain (daughter of Sean O'Faolain and author of No Country for Young Men and other books) takes these staples of romantic fiction and, with a deft and acid twist, fully exposes the human side of the drama. Masterful characterization, especially of minor players, is her forte; the portraits of Niccola, the aging marchesa, and Bonaccorso, who has loved her platonically for 50 years, are bittersweet. Perhaps deliberately, Anne's romantic interest, Guido, remains a cipher, and Anne herself seems more misguided than is strictly necessary. The intelligent woman's alternative to the fake romance of Harlequinreality, with all its twists. Highly recommended. Shelley Cox, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Here, O'Faolain examines the dark coils of familial secrets and poisonous legacies, to tell a tale of passion, ambition and sly corruption, in which the essentially unexamined life of a young Irish girl--enveloped into an old, cultured, infinitely complex Italian family--discovers some surprising affinities. Anne Ryan has come for a stay at the handsome Tuscan villa at the invitation of the Marchesa Niccolosa Cavalcanti. It's the same villa in which her late mother, at 19, had experienced such dazzling happiness. But Mother had left abruptly, only to continue her affair with the magnificent ""Cosimo"" in Ireland, two years after her dismal marriage. Mother's tales of this old, brief passion (""a plant too precious to let die"") had taken root in Anne, who'd suffered under its shadow. Now Anne, whose previous love affairs just didn't measure up, falls in love with Niccolosa's middle-aged son, Guido, a lawyer and skillful practitioner of manipulation and virtuoso obscurations within the labyrinth of Italian politics. Guido's son Neri, like the priest in the author's fine The Obedient Wife (1985) who longs for the clean and simple acts of mind, condemns Guido's mores--""all contingent and adaptable."" Neri will cut the Gordian knot, yet discover--after a terrifying escapade in which he attempts to rescue a radical terrorist (or was he one?)--that ""the knot turns out to made from a mesh of human limbs."" During a dinner party that includes four elders who converse in a ritual speech of ""obscure design,"" Guido performs a periodic version of a Renaissance-style Defense of Love; Anne casually makes love with Neri; and she collects hints about Mother, and regrets Mother's ""unlived life."" Then abruptly there's a legacy, and a secret only dying Niccolosa knows. The demon, long, slumbering in the blood, rises up full-throated, and the Cavalcanti family, soon to encompass an Irish signorina, will contain one more monstrous, ""indelicate"" secret. More showy and high-flown perhaps than The Obedient Wife, but attractive, with a crisp style of easy elegance, agreeably pictorial, and with a darkly grave humor amongst the olive groves. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.