mrswhatsit8's review against another edition
4.0
This lovely novel about a recently widowed woman taking a trip to Italy her dead husband had planned for her, in part to investigate their shared interest in Dante and Giotto, is so much more than that description would indicate. There is a less original version of this story that is a trite, bright meditation on love and second chances after death. There is also a less original version that seeks to flatten and make functional Dante's poetry and Giotto's art by making them clues in a grand puzzle for the protagonist to solve. Instead, Downing tells a beautiful, gentle, and deeply felt story that still manages to surprise and confound as it moves forward, in the same way real life and the embrace of new experience often do. Small touches I loved included the expertly drawn relationships between E and her two adult children - loving but also complex, wry, pushy, and disappointing, in all the ways family can be, especially when caring roles begin to reverse. I also loved the number of times a character would declare something they were going to do, or how things were going to be, and then events would overturn that declaration without comment, simply because things changed over time. This is the way life comes at us, and it lent a movement and verisimilitude to the experience of reading that make the book an immersive experience as well as a literary one. The same could be said for the visual images interspersed in the text, ranging from hand drawings to grainy tourist photos of extraordinary statuary, which lend flavor and depth. Not Great Literature but great literature, and well worth your time - just make sure you are ready to be in your feelings along the way.
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