Love / Amore - Letter To Lorenzo by Amanda Prantera --- Book Review (14)

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The story is told by Juliet, a young English woman, who met an Italian student, Lorenzo, at uni in Cambridge, married him and followed him back to Rome where she now lives with him and their son. Lorenzo is an engineer, the heir and head of a building company. His family belongs to the Roman High Society. BANG! The first paragraph contains the word ´bang´ three times. We are drawn into a fast-paced account of highly dramatic events. One night Juliet is woken by a telephone call informing her that her husband has just died in a bomb explosion while at the wheel of his car. Due to his left-wing views, the public, friends, even Lorenzo´s mother have suspicions that he has been transporting explosives for terrorists. What? A stinking rich capitalist is really a pinko subversive, to use an American expression, a dyed-in-the-wool communist? Yes, indeed. Juliet and Lorenzo woke up one day, spiritually so-to-speak, saw that the world around them was not as it should be and joined the communist party. We are in the 1970s, at the end of the story the putsch in Chile is mentioned which took place in 1973. This is also the era of the Red Brigades, but Juliet who has lived with Lorenzo for seven years knows that to associate him with their terrorist activities is nonsensical, ridiculous, obscene even. How can she prove that her husband is innocent and that she is innocent, that it was almost certainly the Neo-Fascists who planted the bomb to discredit the Left? Juliet is grilled again and again by an unsympathetic, sinister magistrate who wants to prove that she was an accomplice to her late husband´s activities. She engages a lawyer and then she has to wait. Italy´s judicial system isn´t known for its promptness. When she doesn´t play with her son, she walks her dog in a park. There she gets to know and becomes friends with a woman, a refugee from Hungary who has endured unbelievable hardship to escape from her country and reach freedom. This comes as a shock to Juliet. It´s the first time she gets into contact with someone who has personal experience of a communist regime and this person is not happy as should be expected. On the contrary! Juliet is not a stupid woman, what she hears from her friend sets her thinking. The mystery of Lorenzo’s death isn´t solved yet, so there´s an underlying tension which keeps the reader interested. When Juliet goes with her son and the nurse to her cottage in Umbria for the summer, there´s another BANG which finally solves the case. So there is crime, is there sex, too? Yes, but in an unusual and subdued way. Try to imagine a dead ace love scene without any carnal technicalities! What I like about the book is that it isn´t a thriller following the stale and sucked dry pattern of the genre. The well researched political background doesn´t turn into a lecture and Italian habits and customs are depicted accurately. The book reads well, yet it´s not of the nail-biting kind that robs you your sleep. ----- If you're interested in my other book reviews, click on the green line at the top of the site (Malus Book Reviews)