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Cheap Last Train from Liguria – Review
From the bestselling Irish novelist comes a sweeping historical novel, a tale of consequences, spanning from the 1930s to the 1990s
In 1933, Bella Stuart leaves her quiet London life to move to Italy to tutor the child of a beautiful Jewish heiress and an elderly Italian aristocrat. Living at the family’s summer home, Bella’s reserve softens as she comes to love her young charge, and find friendship with Maestro Edward, his enigmatic music teacher.
But as the decade draws to an end
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about 7 months ago
Outstanding,
I took this novel with me for a weekend’s break and read it morning, noon and night and couldn’t put it down until I’d finished. The writing is lyrical and poetic with the most stunning imagery and Bella, the reason for whose timid, clinging and what we would now call anorexic behaviour is explained later on, is a character who gets under your skin. In fact all the characters do, from Bella’s selfish, difficult and mostly absent employer, the American ‘cousins’ to the enigmatic Edward whose crime remains largely unexplained. Alec, I assume , has what is now know as Asperger’s syndrome. One can’t begin to imagine how his final days must have been.
I have read the critical comments here and am amazed. Did these people actually bother to read the book properly? Where is all this bad behaviour and language? Yes, the story of Anna shows a woman who is down in the depths but there is the possibility of redemption for her at the end and her all-too-believable behaviour is also explained by her past. You only have to think of her ‘ancestry.’
The writer does not see the English as inferior. In fact, it is English people who look after Bella on the train when disaster strikes and help her through France and when she gets to London.I believe these reviewers only skim-read the beginning or were expecting Enid Blyton, not an intelligent, deep and thought-provoking read. That the title refers to a train journey which only comes later on is irrelevant. It is built up throughout the whole novel from the very first journey Bella makes.
This is a novel that remains with me even now. I keep thinking about the unfairness and stupidity of war, the vile stain of fascism and anti-Semitism and how people who would never normally meet are flung together, only to fail each other. Stunning.
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|about 7 months ago
A love story of perception and regret.,
I have never read anything by this author before so I have no comparisons to make with previous novels. All I knew was that Christine Dwyer-Hickey is an award winning Irish novelist. While I found this narrative interesting taking us back and forth between London, Dublin and Italy in the nineteen thirties and mid nineteen nineties it neither excited me nor bored me. In fact leaving me feeling rather indifferent about this well written novel. I am disappointed and feel a little guilty admitting this, but there is no point in pretending otherwise. A decent read that was absorbing but nothing particular really drew me in.
The main setting of the story is fascist era Italy where the female protagonist Bella Stuart takes a position as tutor to Alec the son of the aristocratic Lami family. His mother has little time for him and Alec’s life revolves around Bella and his music teacher Edward King. The reader has already learnt much about the latters past in the opening chapter of the novel, a dark secret he keeps to himself in Italy. When the story moves to the present times it is to meet Anna a young woman of Italian descent and gradually connections with the past are uncovered.
It is a vivid picture of Italy during the rise of fascism that the author gives us with a very atmospheric sense of place. A novel not just about the historical period it is set in but a love story of perception and regret.
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|about 7 months ago
A gripping, warm and incisive read,
I really enjoyed this book. I was rather uninspired by the gory first chapter but completely captivated from then on. This is a warm and engaging story that not only deals with the minutiae of an aristocratic family life in Italy in the 1930′s but also touches on the sprawling epic of what was to befall Europe in the lead up to WW11. The characters are thoughtfully and richly depicted, the storyline is strong and coherent and the larger picture across three generations and a number of European countries is clearly drawn. I could not recommend this book more highly.
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