Love In Idleness
'Really charming and inspired' Alison Lurie
-
- 22,99 zł
-
- 22,99 zł
Publisher Description
'This is a life-affirming read - take it on holiday, but leave the rest of the party at home' The Times
'An intelligent and satisfying romantic comedy' Women and Home
At the Casa Luna, friends and relations of the Noble family gather for fortnight's holiday in the enchanted Italian hills.
Daniel, an American academic, is under pressure to marry Ellen, a witty and successful shoe designer.
Hermani, doctor and single mother, is intrigued by Ivo - trickster, charmer, critic - the man Ellen most loathes in the world.
Polly, meanwhile, hopes her domineering mother-in-law will help transform her feral children and give her some much-needed time alone with her workaholic husband.
But the Casa Luna is a place where strange things happen, and anyone who lives there risks unexpected joys and sorrows...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this lighthearted romp, Craig's second novel to be published in the U.S. (after In a Dark Wood), Theo, a successful American businessman residing in London with his wife, Polly, and their son and daughter, Robbie and Tania, rent a house in Tuscany for a two-week vacation. With match-making intentions, they invite seven friends, including an Indian-British divorc e, Hemani, with a young son, Bron; former model Ellen; three eligible bachelors; and, most formidable of all, Theo's starchy mother. At the end of the first week, Polly is doing all the work, her relationship with Theo is crumbling, the hoped-for romances are not materializing and the three youngsters are fighting with one another. Only the owner of the house, a "W. Shade," is absent. The vacation appears to be a failure, but something of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream haunts the lush forest nearby, especially when Tania, with the advice of sparkle-sized fairy folk, prepares and administers a potion to the adults. The romantic entanglements that ensue might flummox even Shakespeare; one is not between a previously argumentative couple at all, but between two men, one of whom is Theo. Craig is perhaps too leisurely about introducing the quasi-fantasy element, but it works, and when the mysterious W. Shade finally arrives, he is in for a romantic surprise of his own. This is amusing, featherweight stuff, and readers who love to see posh vacationers gamboling about in Italy will eat it up.