Vintage Contemporaries / I Give It to You
A Novel
(Sprache: Englisch)
An "immensely satisfying story (The Guardian) of family, war, art, and betrayal set around an ancient, ancestral home in the Tuscan countryside from the bestselling, award-winning author of Property.
When Jan Vidor, an American writer and...
When Jan Vidor, an American writer and...
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An "immensely satisfying story (The Guardian) of family, war, art, and betrayal set around an ancient, ancestral home in the Tuscan countryside from the bestselling, award-winning author of Property.When Jan Vidor, an American writer and academic, rents an apartment in a Tuscan villa for the summer, she plans to spend her break working on a novel about Mussolini. Instead, she finds herself captivated by her aristocratic landlady, the elegant, acerbic Beatrice Salviati Bartolo Doyle, whose family has owned Villa Chiara for generations. Jan is intrigued by Beatrice s stories of World War II, particularly by the tragic fate of her uncle Sandro, who was mysteriously murdered in the driveway of the villa at the conclusion of the war. Day by day, Beatrice makes Jan privy to her family history.
As years go by and the friendship is sustained by infrequent meetings, Jan finds she can t resist writing Beatrice s story. But as she works on the novel, it becomes clear that the villa itself is at risk and that Beatrice is incapable of saving it. Jan understands that she is telling the story of a catastrophe her friend might prefer to conceal. She presses on.
Lese-Probe zu „Vintage Contemporaries / I Give It to You “
PART 1Villa Chiara
Villa Chiara is protected from the world outside by a high stone wall and an ancient gate with the initial S swirled in iron on each wing. The dusty, sunstruck road, scarcely wide enough for two small cars to pass each other without knocking their mirrors, cleaves to the wall for half a mile. On the far side, ranks of iconic sunflowers stand at attention like stolid soldiers, indifferent to the elements, awaiting their orders.
When you turn in to the gates, what strikes you is that, though very near the road, the sparse yard that serves as a parking area feels private and cool. This gravel and packed-dirt patch is closed on four sides. On two, gardens of roses and herbs, backed by plum and apricot trees, disperse gentle fragrances into the hot afternoon air. Parallel to the gate, the charming limonaia stands with its back to the wall. Glass and verdigris copper doors glint beneath the shelter of the rafters, which extend over a small stone terrace. Artfully placed hip-high pots of rosemary and lemon trees create a cool and semiprivate sitting area.
On the fourth side, the imposing pale pink facade of the villa closes in the drive. A graceful triangular double staircase rises from two directions to a wide landing before the arched manorial door. The villa has three floors. The lowest, behind the staircase, is the cantina, an unfinished space used to store farm equipment as well as wine and olive oil, both products of the property. The two upper levels are lined with tall shuttered windows looking out over the drive. The house isn t grand but rather grandly substantial, and because of the perimeter wall it is impossible to view it from any distance. The Villa Chiara thus creates for itself an encapsulated space, peaceful, retired, without views.
I arrived at Villa Chiara a week before I met its owner, Signora Beatrice Salviati Bartolo Doyle. I knew only a few facts about her. She was employed as a professor of Italian at a small
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college in upstate New York. When she wasn t in America, she lived in the villa with her aged mother. Obviously she had, at some point, married a man of Irish ancestry. She had a grown son, David, who resided in Munich with his German wife and their baby son. She had spent some years in Los Angeles when her son was a child. She rented out a small apartment at the villa, but only to tenants recommended by friends. I was fortunate enough to know one of these, Ruggiero Vignorelli, who was a colleague at my own college in Pennsylvania.
The apartment, created from the limonaia, an outbuilding designed to shelter citrus trees in the winter, comprised a kitchen and sitting room on the first floor, a large airy bedroom and minimalist bath the shower was an open tiled area with a drain and a showerhead on the second. Signora Doyle had renovated it for her son and his wife so that they might have more privacy when they drove down from Munich to visit. It was the first of many decisions about her property that suggested a lack of foresight. In a few years the couple would have two children and the space would be too small.
On my first visit, in the summer of 1983, I had written instructions from Signora Doyle directing me to the far end of the villa, beyond the imposing staircase, where I was to knock at the door I would find beneath a wisteria arbor and ask for Signora Mimma, Signora Doyle s cousin, who lived there and would give me the key to the apartment. I had very little Italian, but I hoped it would be sufficient to see me through this simple task. I parked my rental car in the drive facing the villa and easily spotted the wisteria bower and the door. There was no bell, so I rapped sharply three times on the dark wood, waited until I had counted to fifty, and rapped again. I heard footsteps dimly, slowly approaching, and then the door slid open and a chubby white-haired crone peered out
The apartment, created from the limonaia, an outbuilding designed to shelter citrus trees in the winter, comprised a kitchen and sitting room on the first floor, a large airy bedroom and minimalist bath the shower was an open tiled area with a drain and a showerhead on the second. Signora Doyle had renovated it for her son and his wife so that they might have more privacy when they drove down from Munich to visit. It was the first of many decisions about her property that suggested a lack of foresight. In a few years the couple would have two children and the space would be too small.
On my first visit, in the summer of 1983, I had written instructions from Signora Doyle directing me to the far end of the villa, beyond the imposing staircase, where I was to knock at the door I would find beneath a wisteria arbor and ask for Signora Mimma, Signora Doyle s cousin, who lived there and would give me the key to the apartment. I had very little Italian, but I hoped it would be sufficient to see me through this simple task. I parked my rental car in the drive facing the villa and easily spotted the wisteria bower and the door. There was no bell, so I rapped sharply three times on the dark wood, waited until I had counted to fifty, and rapped again. I heard footsteps dimly, slowly approaching, and then the door slid open and a chubby white-haired crone peered out
... weniger
Autoren-Porträt von Valerie Martin
VALERIE MARTIN is the author of eleven novels, four collections of short fiction, and a biography of Saint Francis of Assisi, titled Salvation. She has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as the Kafka Prize (for Mary Reilly) and Britain's Orange Prize (for Property).
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Valerie Martin
- 2021, 304 Seiten, Masse: 13,3 x 20,3 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: VINTAGE
- ISBN-10: 0593082117
- ISBN-13: 9780593082119
- Erscheinungsdatum: 04.08.2021
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
A novel of philosophical and creative inquiry, cleverly plotted and packed with great characters.... Immensely satisfying.... [A] beautifully fractal novel. The Guardian
The stories at the heart of Valerie Martin s latest novel, I Give It to You, are freely, but not always innocently, shared. And what Martin s narrator does with them raises prickly questions of ownership, artistic license and ethical responsibility.
The New York Times Book Review
Martin s prose, while effortlessly readable, can take deliciously unexpected turns . . . As enticing as the Salviati family s history is, it s the sense of a game being played on multiple levels that lends I Give It to You its deepest powers of seduction.
The Seattle Times
"Valerie Martin has always been a consummate storyteller, but in her new novel she tackles the question of where do a writer s stories come from. And to whom does a story belong? The person it happened to or the one who tells it. In some ways all writers betray their subjects, and Valerie Martin digs into the heart of that betrayal. Reminiscent of Rachel Cusk s Outline Martin masterfully gives voice to those who have been silenced, whose stories would be lost were it not for a writer to retell it."
Mary Morris, author of All the Way to the Tigers
"Yes, the narrator of Martin s new novel is a middle-aged American woman vacationing in Tuscany, but this prickly, uncomfortably relevant dive into personal and societal ethics is no escapist romance . . . Martin parses personal and social politics with methodical care and a reserved tone reminiscent of Edith Wharton.
Kirkus, (starred review)
Praise for Sea Lovers:
She always produces something unexpected and revelatory.
Jane Smiley, author of Perestroika in Paris
Praise for Ghost of the Mary Celeste:
"A writer of immense talent and insight."
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Yann Martel, author of The Life of Pi
"Wonderfully ingenious, compelling, convincing and exciting."
John Banville, author of Mrs. Osmond
Praise for Confessions of Edward Day:
Martin writes with amplitude, precision, grace, and wit.
Margaret Atwood, New York Times Book Review
"Wonderfully ingenious, compelling, convincing and exciting."
John Banville, author of Mrs. Osmond
Praise for Confessions of Edward Day:
Martin writes with amplitude, precision, grace, and wit.
Margaret Atwood, New York Times Book Review
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