World War, 1939-1945

This is more ambitious than the run-of-the-mill crime fiction at £0.89, and worth much more in every sense.

It takes the form of the diary of an Italian anti-fascist partisan interleaved with a contemporary whodunnit, the solution to the latter obviously relating closely to the events described in the former.

I found both parts of the narrative equally engaging, for different reasons, and with different reservations: the diary entries, concerning events surrounding the deaths of a partisan unit in 1944 were affecting in their evocation of what must have been horrendous times. But the characterisation here was flat, causing a particular problem because so much of the novel turns on identities (real, imagined and stolen), more specifically names (married, maiden and assumed). With only a couple of exceptions, I was quite unable to remember who on earth was who (although, come to think of it, this may be entirely intentional on the part of the author).

The contemporary detective novel is well enough done, although in these pages, while the smaller cast of characters is more easily distinguishable, they seem comparatively trivial; we get, too, little sense of contemporary Florence, or of any meaningful relationship between Italy and her past, except in the very specific cases of individual partisans, sixty years on. A minor cavil, perhaps.

The end of the novel comes more as a satisfying resolution than surprising revelation, but is no less effective for that.

I would heartily recommend this book to readers interested in a story of Italian resistance; it will be of less interest to avid thriller readers. ( )

The actual Villa features less in the book than I thought it would, the story is about, bravery, betrayal and courage
A well told tale mixing the past with the present ( )

A great story and a good read. The suspense lasts right to the end of the book. There are (I'm informed by an Italian speaker) a plethora of annoying errors in the Italian words, sentences and expressions sprinkled through the book, the most pervasive of which is the nickname of Isabella. In Italy the short form of Isabella is "Isa", "Issa" means "heave-ho" in a maritime sense, which strikes Italians as distinctly odd. But even that isn't enough to spoil the story. ( )

No other historical fiction novel has grabbed my attention like that of Lucretia Grindle's "Villa Triste." Grindle expertly intertwines contemporary mystery with historical fiction set in a location that many novels about World War II do not touch on as heavily. Set in Italy during the Nazi occupation, readers are told the gripping story of two sisters, one on the brink of marriage and both quickly forced to make decisions impacting the present day murder investigation of a local partisan hero. Grindle weaves the present day and the past in a way that continually captivated me, with an ending that left me thinking about the Cammaccio sisters, and the trials of so many others during that time, long after I turned the last page.

Sarah M. / Marathon County Public Library
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