Author:Francesca Marciano
This second novel by the author of the acclaimed Rules of the Wild is very much in the tradition of The Leopard or The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, a compelling story of three generations in twentieth-century Italy. Casa Rossa, the home of the Strada family, is a magnificent farmhouse standing amidst the olive groves of Puglia. The story opens as the house is being sold. Alina, the daughter entrusted with packing it up, is piecing together the fragments of her family's past. Her grandmother, Renee, a beautiful Tunisian pied noir, muse and model to Alina's painter grandfather, left him for a woman and fled to Paris. Her mother Alba, who grew up at Casa Rossa, marries a melancholic screenwriter, who dies in mysterious circumstances. And then there is her sister Isabella, once her best friend, who becomes a stranger caught up in a bitter fight for a dangerous ideology. The sisters' love for each other is always precarious, and in time shifts to a betrayal of which they can never speak. A haunting story of what happens when family secrets collide with history, Casa Rossa moves from the duplicity of Italy's role in the 1930s to the dark years of Red Brigade's terrorism in the seventies. Intricate, moving, suspenseful, Casa Rossa confirms Francesca Marciano as a writer of remarkable gifts.
A rip-roaring read
—— Evening StandardThere's never a dreary moment in this blast of a book . . . Johnson's descriptions are irresistibly exuberant . . . As addictively, fizzily invigorating as the Alpine air itself
—— Daily MailJohnson delivers a genuine sense of time and place . . . there isn't a dull sentence in this sure-footed novel
—— Jenny Colgan , TelegraphExcellent on period detail, the blundering innocent abroad and young heartbreak
—— Sunday TimesAn excellent romp. Full of 'tally-ho' Mitfordian charm . . . a witty, fast read
—— RedAn edifying moral lesson as well as a tale of inter-generational sleuthing
—— SpectatorThe Jane Austen of W11
—— ScotsmanJohnson is excellent on period detail and captures the flavour of an era when the storm clouds were gathering
—— Mail on SundayA wonderfully majestic and evocative tale of 18th century Russia at a key moment in history
—— Candis MagazineAn intensely written, intensely felt saga of the early years that shaped the 18th century's famous czarina, Catherine the Great. Her survival in the treachery of the Russian court was an amazing feat, and Eva Stachniak captures the fluidity and steeliness that propelled Catherine from a lowly German duchess to one of the towering figures of the century
—— Karleen Koen, author of Through a Glass DarklyA riveting reconstruction of a crucial era in Russian history… shows iconic figures of the period as real people
—— BBC History MagazineCovering the twenty years that turned Catherine the Great from a young bride on approval to the legendary Empress of Russia, Eva Stachniak's novel gives a magical insight into the hopes and fears that haunted the corridors of the St Petersburg palace. It brings alive the very tastes and textures of the mid-eighteenth century
—— Sarah Gristwood, author of Arbella and The Girl in the MirrorAn intimate portrait of 18th century girl-power
—— IndependentA wry moral tale exploring the little evasions and compromises of everyday life. Translator Agnes Scott does justice to Solstad’s measured voice
—— Emma Hagestadt , IndependentThis short-but-striking novel quickly reveals itself to be…crime fiction, yes, but also a subtle and deeply introspective consideration of the inertia of lonely middle-age, its philosophy existentialist in the manner of Jean Paul Sartre, Ingmar Bergman and certain novels of Georges Simenon. The result is a highly complex and accomplished work
—— Billy O'Callaghan , Irish ExaminerIntriguing tale… Solstad expertly navigates the bizarre mind of a clever but lonely man locked in an existentialist nightmare
—— TelegraphThis is no straightforward crime novel…an exploration of guilt, inaction and moral quandaries
—— Nic Bottomley , Bath Life
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