One Italian Summer

by Rebecca Serle

Atria     2022

272 pages     Magical Realism

As I am writing this, I am looking out the window on the Gulf Cost in Alabama, but dreaming of the Amalfi coast, the setting for One Italian Summer. It was the perfect book to read on vacation, because I was able to spend a great deal of time thinking about my relationship to my mother, when I was a young woman.

Kate Silver and her mother, Carol, had made plans and purchased tickets to visit the beautiful village of Positano, Italy. Positano was Carol’s favorite place, and she really wanted to share the beauty with her daughter, but after several months of suffering, Carol died. As a way to assuage her grief, Kate decides to leave her husband Eric and take the trip by herself to try to understand who she is without her mother, who had been her rock. She muses: “I cannot yet conceive of a world without her, what that will look like, who I am in her absence.”

Once she arrives, Kate is overwhelmed by the beauty of Positano and begins to follow the plans that her mother has laid out. She feels a little guilty about leaving Eric, who has been another constant in her life, but one of the goals for her trip was to decide what their relationship will be going forward. The views, the restaurants, and the hiking paths immediately call to her, and she begins to find some peace. Shockingly, she meets a young woman named Carol, who is 30, and Kate is sure that this is her mother as a young woman. As the two women become fast friends, Kate’s confusion is palpable. How is this possible? To add to her stress and confusion, Kate meets a businessman named Adam, to whom she is immediately attracted. How is this going to play out?

The plot is somewhat predictable, once the reader understands that Serle specializes in magical realism. It did intrigue me enough to keep turning the pages, but I found that the real strength of the books lies in the character development. We learn so much about Kate through her narration; young Carol is also strong, and you can’t help but be as attracted to Adam as Kate is.

The most important aspect of the book for me was the strength of the bond between Kate and her mother. My relationship with my mother was quite different from Kate’s, but I have watched a similar relationship between my sister and her daughters. My daughter and I have a very strong relationship, but I work hard not to offer too much advice. The book certainly caused me a lot of thought and contemplation about familial relationships.

The other aspect that I appreciated was my introduction to limoncello, an Italian drink that Kate learns to appreciate. I bought a bottle to see how I would like it—and indeed I did. A little bit goes a long way! 

This is my first book by Rebecca Serle, but I very much liked her poetic word choices and the delightful way in which she introduces the reader to magical realism. I scratched my head several times trying to figure out how in the world Kate could have met her mother as a young woman. When the reason emerges, it was obvious—and wonderful.

I loved the final comment from the Publisher’s Weekly reviewer, “Once again, Serle gets the job done just fine.” And indeed, she did. One Italian Summer will be released next Tuesday.

The Third Hotel

By Laura van den Berg

Farrar, Straus & Giroux     2018

224 pages     Fiction

I have spent 3 days reading The Third Hotel, and I have no idea what I have just finished. One reviewer called it “strange, unsettling, and profound from start to finish.” Ok. I believe that.

Don’t quite know where to start. Here is the summary:

“In Havana, Cuba, a widow tries to come to terms with her husband’s death―and the truth about their marriage―in Laura van den Berg’s surreal, mystifying story of psychological reflection and metaphysical mystery.
Shortly after Clare arrives in Havana, Cuba, to attend the annual Festival of New Latin American Cinema, she finds her husband, Richard, standing outside a museum. He’s wearing a white linen suit she’s never seen before, and he’s supposed to be dead. Grief-stricken and baffled, Clare tails Richard, a horror film scholar, through the newly tourist-filled streets of Havana, clocking his every move. As the distinction between reality and fantasy blurs, Clare finds grounding in memories of her childhood in Florida and of her marriage to Richard, revealing her role in his death and reappearance along the way.” 

Yeah! I told you. The Third Hotel is strange and unsettling. I looked up the definition of magical realism in my search to put a name on the genre in which the book might fit. Wikipedia defines it this way: “a genre of narrative fiction that, while encompassing a range of subtly different concepts, expresses a primarily realistic view of the real world while also adding or revealing magical elements.” I believe this fits the bill, although in many ways, van den Berg’s writing defies categorization.

At its heart The Third Hotel is a meditation on grief and loss. Clare has just lost her husband Richard. Her level of grief is profound, and when she sees him from a distance in Havana, she follows him as she seeks answers to all the unanswered questions of her life and marriage. When she finally meets up with him and they take a journey into the mountains of Cuba, the mystery that is her husband is amplified and her grief is compounded rather than appeased. The reader never comes to a conclusion about who or what Clare is seeing when she discovers Richard; is he a ghost, a doppelganger? “She ordered herself to stop recognizing him, since what she was recognizing was plainly impossible, but then she crept closer and saw just how possible it was.”

What is absolutely certain is that Laura van den Berg is an incredible writer. The setting, the imagery, and the language is absolutely breathtaking. I loved the descriptions of Cuba, and I felt like I was on the scene every moment, even if I didn’t quite see Richard like Clare did (or did she actually see Richard?). We are so very clearly exposed to the inner workings of Clare’s mind; “the gap between her inner reality and the world around felt so enormous she feared she was going to be swallowed up.” All the way through the novel, we are privvy to Clare’s inner reality. We are never sure what to believe—what she is seeing. One of my favorite lines relating to Clare is: “the ice cube she had pressed against her heart in childhood was proving slow to thaw.”

The New York Times reviewer cautions the reader looking for noir, a mystery, or a thriller. He says,  “Don’t take the bait when “The Third Hotel” starts voguing like a thriller. Instead, read it as the inscrutable future cult classic it probably is, and let yourself be carried along by its twisting, unsettling currents.”

In his praise for the novel and its author, the Washington Post reviewer says, “The most transforming kind of fiction is capable of causing a dislocation of reality: a bit of the bizarre, a lot kept beneath the surface and worlds opening within worlds.”

I recommend The Third Hotel with caution. Look out so that you don’t become crazed trying to figure out the plot; rejoice in the vivid descriptions of Cuba and the incredible writing; and breathe a sigh of relief when it is finished—if indeed it is finished. 

Additionally, I am done reading about grief-stricken widows for a while. I feel like my summer has been filled with their stories. On to other stuff.