The Chapel
A Novel
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
“[A] love story for adults— wrapped in a sophisticated mystery about art, religion and the fragility of the human heart."— Elizabeth Benedict, bestselling author of Almost
A recently widowed woman of a certain age sets off on a tour of Italy in this moving and witty novel interwoven with art history and romance.
Recently widowed, unhappily stuck on a pricey whiplash tour of Italy, Elizabeth Berman comes face to face with the first documented painting of a teardrop in human history, and in the presence of that tearful mother, and the arresting company of the renowned and anonymous women painted by Giotto in the Arena Chapel, she wakes up to the possibility that she is not lost.
Mitchell left me everything, just as he promised. "Everything," he liked to say during his last month on the sofa, "everything will be yours," as if it wasn't yet. I was left with that and two adult children who could not tolerate my sitting in my home by myself—admittedly, rather too often in a capacious pink flannel nightgown and the green cardigan Mitchell was wearing on the afternoon he died.
That's how Elizabeth winds up on a tour better suited to her late–husband, a Dante scholar. Mitchell masterminded the itinerary as a surprise for their thirty–fifth wedding anniversary.
Itching to leave as soon as she arrives in Padua, Elizabeth's efforts to book a ticket home are stymied by her aggressively supportive children and the ministrations of an incomprehensibly Italian hotel staff.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fiction and nonfiction author Downing's (Perfect Agreement) latest work combines art, art history, and Italian allure into a cerebral romance channeling love, loss, and the complexities of emotional closure. Liz Berman, widowed by her husband Mitchell, still mourns the recent loss, though her two adult children refuse to allow the 50-something ex-librarian from New England to dismiss her 35th wedding anniversary, a "month-long Italian adventure" family vacation, which had been planned before his death. To honor the fact that Mitchell had been penning a book on Dante, Liz, somewhat reluctantly, embarks on a grand tour of Padua accentuated by an eccentric gaggle of travelling intellectual artists including a flirty silver-haired doctor named T, who persuades her to travel further with him instead of returning home, much to the chagrin of her concerned children. Light melodrama plays out against a backdrop of the exquisite scenery of the Arena Chapel, Giotto di Bondone's famous frescoes, and Italy's general majesty, which all work their magic on Liz and lull her into a mesmerized state of awe and romantic delusion. Snapping her out of it is a revelation that hits close to home and reminds her that her real life awaits back in Cambridge, with or without T. Line drawings, photographs, blueprints, and some exceptionally witty prose and banter complement this affecting story which, despite a relatively pat resolution, remains vividly entertaining.
