This is not the edition I have - my one is a 1969 paperback Penguin, badly worn around the edges with a picture of an ornate fountain backed by tall balconied buildings. Thanks to Laura for drawing my attention to Hazzard. Essentially this is a romance that makes you see how much weight there is in the choices we make when we are young. And Sophie's reluctance to begin her life takes its fuel subtly from the stories of the world she finds herself in. But she is surrounded by unhappy history. The choice should be easy: she's in love. It's a crossroads moment in her life which will irreparably determine the kind of person she will become. Although the affair has an air of a holiday romance, we begin to see the entire course of the heroine's life is in the balance. It's a novel that gets wiser and wiser as it goes on. I don't think there's a lazy pointless sentence in the entire book. She's a very writerly writer - so much craft goes into her every sentence. The descriptive writing is always beautiful. This is a writer who loves Italy and knows it intimately. The evocation of Italy is one of this novel's high points. Before long though, continually brought together by circumstance, they are romantically bound. A young English woman, Sophie meets a separated married Italian man, Tancredi and initially they don't much like each other. It's set in a town in Tuscany - a kind of cross between Siena and Lucca. This is Shirley Hazzard's first novel and ostensibly occupies a small canvas.
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