Italian Fever

Italian Fever by Valerie Martin was a peculiar book, a bit too chick-lit for me. It was as if she wasn't sure what kind of book she wanted to write; it started off with hints of ghost story, then a possible wartime mystery and then it veered off into this romantic interlude, sorted out the supposed mystery and darted back to the ghost story on the last page.

Lucy, an ordinary young woman, goes to Italy to sort out the affairs of her employer, a popular writer, who has died under not really very mysterious circumstances. She falls ill, makes a fool of herself, falls for the brooding macho italian bloke, makes a fool of herself again, admires some art and then goes home. I didn't like her much, she seemed slightly irrelevant to the story as she was just a victim of the circumstances and made stupid choices and behaved stupidly. It annoys me in films where they make people drive off down dark country lanes when you know their car is going to break down and then walk though the woods looking for assistance, you know what I mean, when people don't make sensible logical decisions, they do stupid things just because it will drive the story in a particular direction, and it feels like bad writing. Well this is just how this story seems to go. It was like she was just naive and out of her depth, and then she gets swept away by the strong silent man who arrives to take care of her. I just didn't care that much about any of it, the story or the people in the story, which was a disappointment. I left the tape running because I was knitting and it was keeping me company, so at least I didn't feel as if I had wasted the time reading it.

On the plus side the 'dunky jumpy' is coming along well, I have the week off work to get some decorating done, Tish is coming for dinner today and Angharad and Haydn (Dunk's offspring) are coming up to visit.