One Italian Summer

When Carol Silver dies, her daughter Katy is unmoored. She escapes her disintegrating life and marriage by traveling to Italy, going on the trip she had planned to take with her mother, to the town where Carol had spent an extraordinary summer when she was a twentysomething figuring out her own life needs. Like Katy’s sun-filled days in Positano, the novel spreads out, detailing delicious meals and indolent naps. Serle (In Five Years) deftly immerses readers into the landscape and evokes feelings of rest and recovery. But the novel details more than an escape from grief. It asks how one picks the life they want, for early in her stay Katy looks up and sees Carol as a young woman living her Positano sojourn. Serle does not dwell on the time slip but adroitly uses it to allow mother and daughter to connect and reconnect.