As a huge fan of The Italian Party, I was curious to see what Christina Lynch would do next. Her sophomore effort was almost a tale of two stories. I now know why I saw several reviews from readers that refused to finish the book. I was not a fan of the first half, but came around in the second.
Sally Brady has a rough start to life, as an 11 year old in the Depression sent off by her parents to find work in California. As luck would have it, she’s adopted by a film star. The story quickly moves to prewar Italy. Sally is a gal with the ability to land on her feet no matter the circumstances.
The story is told and alternates between 3 perspectives. The first is Sally’s, who has gone on to become an impossibly young gossip columnist. Lapo, an Italian writer and farmer, whose writing Mussolini takes a fancy to, and his son, Alessandro, aged 17, an anti-fascist but still of draft age. He ends up in the Italian army in Prague.
It’s obvious that Lynch was trying to balance the humor inherent in the idea of a young gossip columnist caught in Italy with the horrors the Italian government visited on their country. But the first half of Sally’s story comes across as trite and silly. To be honest, I initially found her irritating in the extreme. “I was careful to wear my red arm band, even when it clashed with my outfit.”
I was much more interested in Lapo’s and Allessandro’s stories. Here, Lynch doesn’t attempt to be silly. These two are allowed to bear serious witness to what’s happening. “Alessandro remembered one of his professors saying that as societies collapse they spend more money on wars, police and prisons.”
The story is slow to start, taking ages to get to what I would consider the “meat” of the story. Once it did, though, I became more engaged. Sally becomes more real, not quite so silly. In essence, she grows up.
Elise Roth is the narrator and captures Sally’s devil may care, perky manner. She’s less successful on the parts of the story concerning Lapo and Alessandro. In fact, her attempt at a voice for Felice Pappone made him sound like a boy, not a 6’2” bruiser of a man.
My thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press/Macmillan Audio for an advance copy of this book.