Early One Morning

This novel opens in 1943, when an impromptu act of daring on the part of Chiara Ravello, a young woman who is about to flee Nazi-occupied Rome with her mentally impaired older sister, transforms the twosome into a party of three. Daniele Levi, the addition, is a Jewish boy, and Chiara pretends he is her nephew so he won't be deported along with the other Jews from the ghetto, including his family. The novel focuses on the Ravellos, including their lives with and without Daniele, and on Maria, Daniele's teenaged daughter, who is unknown to him until she makes contact via post 30 years later. Though moving, the book is at times weighed down by its heavy subject matter, and the constant shifts in time periods makes it difficult to get more than a surface sense of most of the characters. The novel's promise is never fully realized, but narrator Jilly Bond dutifully renders the voices of characters who range in age, sex, and nationality.