‘One of the most beautiful, poignant and poetic love stories, as relevant today as it was then’
SARAH WINMAN
‘My first intimation of the possibilities of fiction’
ZADIE SMITH
‘Brimming with yearning and desire . . . a novel I return to often’
CALEB AZUMAH NELSON
‘You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.’
Young, impressionable Lucy Honeychurch arrives in Italy for the first time, dependent on a Baedeker travel guide and her stern chaperone, Miss Bartlett. Staying at the Pension Bertolini, where a group of unusual characters come together, Lucy explores the basilicas and piazzas of Florence, the romantic charm of Italy beginning to work on her. And then one day, on a hill of violets overlooking the city, an encounter with passionate George Emerson opens Lucy’s eyes to the possibility of a life beyond the constraints of her middle-class upbringing.
Back in England, among the tennis courts and manicured lawns of home, Lucy tries to regain the respectable path laid out for her. But when she meets George again, she is torn between social obligation and the desire for a different sort of life. Can she learn how to be true to herself, before the possibility of a life of love and beauty slips through her fingers?
SARAH WINMAN
‘My first intimation of the possibilities of fiction’
ZADIE SMITH
‘Brimming with yearning and desire . . . a novel I return to often’
CALEB AZUMAH NELSON
‘You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.’
Young, impressionable Lucy Honeychurch arrives in Italy for the first time, dependent on a Baedeker travel guide and her stern chaperone, Miss Bartlett. Staying at the Pension Bertolini, where a group of unusual characters come together, Lucy explores the basilicas and piazzas of Florence, the romantic charm of Italy beginning to work on her. And then one day, on a hill of violets overlooking the city, an encounter with passionate George Emerson opens Lucy’s eyes to the possibility of a life beyond the constraints of her middle-class upbringing.
Back in England, among the tennis courts and manicured lawns of home, Lucy tries to regain the respectable path laid out for her. But when she meets George again, she is torn between social obligation and the desire for a different sort of life. Can she learn how to be true to herself, before the possibility of a life of love and beauty slips through her fingers?
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Reviews
My first intimation of the possibilities of fiction: how wholly one might feel for it and through it, how much it could do to you
Brimming with yearning and desire, the complexities of class, wealth and status and the constant feeling of uncertainty that accompanies being a young person - this is a novel I return to often
One of the most beautiful, poignant and poetic love stories as relevant today as it was then