Reviewed by Emma Crowley
1945, Italy. Two sisters give birth to two little girls on the same night, huddled under blankets, deep in the black woods that surround the village of Bosconero. They hold their babies close as footsteps approach. If they make even the slightest sound, the German soldiers will find them…
1996. Luce Nardini searches the cobbled streets of a remote Italian village for a house with a faded blue door. Since her only child left home, and with her estranged husband more distant than ever, she’s been completely untethered. Discovering why her mother cut all contact with her family and the village she loved feels like Luce’s last hope at understanding who she is.
Inside the house, she’s relieved to find the grandmother she never knew living out her final days. With a longing look at an ornate wooden box on her nightstand, her grandmother is just beginning to tell the heart-wrenching story of a little village ravaged by war, and why Luce’s mother swore never to return, when then the unthinkable happens: an earth-shattering disaster that shakes the little village of Bosconero to its core.
Feeling more lost than ever before, Luce fears that the secrets of her past have been buried forever. Her only hope is to win back the trust of the small community and find her grandmother’s little wooden box amongst the rubble of the village.
But will the surprise arrival of the husband she thought she’d lost help sew Luce’s family back together, or tear it apart for good? And will anything have prepared her for the devastating betrayal she finds hidden inside the box…?
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of The Lost Village to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
The second book this year from Daniela Sacerdoti takes us once again back to Italy and boy does she have a way a wonderful way of writing about this beautiful country. The Lost Village moves effortlessly between the past and the modern day, perhaps the modern aspect is more dominant, with a story full of twists and tales, anguish, heartbreak, hope and love. I really enjoyed this story as it wasn’t too taxing but had just the right amount of detail and mystery to keep you rapidly turning the pages to discover the secrets as Luce Nardini attempts to uncover the reasons behind a family estrangement. A tense and unsettling opening sees a young woman escaping to see her boyfriend but on her way tragedy strikes and her father lies dead in the woods. Even from this brief introduction, I was left with lots of questions the answers only becoming clear in the final pages.
We then move forward to 2006 and Luce is boarding a plane to Italy. She has never been there before and her mother Angelina refuses to talk about her family, why she left the country she was born in and why contact with her family has ceased? This secrecy eats away at Luce and she wants to know the cause of it. She won’t rest until she has all the answers and the enigma surrounding her family has been unravelled. What are they hiding and why? What could have been so drastic that meant her mother left the safety of her home leading to a significant estrangement and silence on all matters connected to her relatives? For Luce, now is the perfect time to embark on this journey as she is experiencing empty nest syndrome now that her son has left for university. She has been separated from her husband Ethan for several years and as she feels a bit adrift now is the perfect opportunity to venture outside her comfort zone and in doing so she may very well find some much needed confirmation and conclusion. But is she really ready for what she will uncover or will it tear the family apart even more?
Luce is met off the plane by her cousin Matilde, whose existence she never knew of until recently, and from that moment on I felt a whole new Luce began to emerge. I got the impression that the Luce that resides in America was slightly weak and hadn’t enough confidence in herself but it’s like the moment she steps foot on Italian soil, she takes on a whole new persona. The change in atmosphere, a whole new country and with new family members to meet inspires her on to be someone different and her quest takes on a fervour that sees her grow in confidence and she becomes almost ruthless, but in a good way, to get to the bottom of all the family problems. Her mother has been carrying a burden inside that is eating her up and Luce is determined that this will not go on any longer. Luce doesn’t know where her roots are or who her father is and with Matilde and her fiancée Massimo working alongside her she hopes the answers will come thick and fast. She views Italy as being full of promise, possibilities and discoveries. But she doesn’t bank on tragedy striking the region and when this happens the sense of urgency to reach the truth only intensifies.
Luce finally gets to meet her grandmother Clelia who has this wonderful aura about her but her Uncle Carlo is less than welcoming and refuses to have anything to do with her. Here she comes up great resistance and it’s almost as if he is dangerous. Luce is clever enough to realise that her grandmother holds the key to what exactly happened and the answers are not straight forward but will take time to come to the surface having been surpressed for so long. She keeps pushing even when doors are closed in her face and the walls already erected just seem to grow taller. Italy provides so many new opportunities for her and she became like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis transformed. The constraints and tensions surrounding her heart and mind were dissipating. I loved her determination to keep going as I think she really sensed this was the make or break time. It was now or never and even more so when an earthquake hits the region and the town of Bosconero is virtually destroyed.
The story had a steady pace to it right from the start but I thought towards the middle section the story does lose its way slightly. Then the from the moment the earthquake hit, everything really ramped up a gear and these scenes were incredibly well written. The emotions flowed from the page and the anger at what was unfolding combined with the danger, grief, loss and desperation that Luce experiences as she doesn’t know if the family she is finally starting to get close are gone forever was believable and real. The earthquake was an even greater catalyst for the truth to emerge and as Luce battles with her own feelings towards someone that are starting to stir and the torrent of emotions as things begin to spill forth I was with her all the way as she rushes about trying to find out were people safe after the disastrous event. Whilst at the same time the momentum she had been gaining in inching ever closer to what exactly had happened all those years ago, well she didn’t want to lose that and I am glad that she kept picking away at the wound until it slowly started to open. Luce had such bravery, courage and an inner strength that I deeply sensed she didn’t know she possessed. It really only emerged when she needed it to the most. I got the feeling that it took her by surprise and had she remained in America this new Luce would never have emerged and she would have gone about the remainder of her life just aimlessly drifting along. Happy enough but never truly contented.
A line on the cover suggests this is an emotional World War Two story and to some extent it is but I thought someone thinking this would be the sole focus would be left disappointed. There is more time spent with Luce in the modern day than with Clelia in the past but it suited me perfectly. It’s a different kind of world war story but one I did very much enjoy as the author only took us back to the past when she deemed it absolutely necessary and the information and insights given to us at these junctures propelled us back to the present with enough information to whet our appetites for more of Luce doing her best to right so many wrongs even if for most of the book she didn’t know what they were. It was necessary to have Clelia retell her story to Luce as it gave the reader a chance to delve back to Italy during World War Two and also it gave a tantalising clue as to the meaning of the books title. Clelia in the past is very different to the Clelia in the present and she surprised me many many times.
The Lost Village showed how Luce’s family were very complicated with their feelings tangled and unclear and so much left unspoken and enshrouded in secrecy, spite and jealousy. Luce does her best to repair the rip in the fabric of the family but in order to do this she had to understand the role the past played in how they reached the present situation. I couldn’t believe some of the truths and insights that poured out in the last quarter of the book many of which I had never seen coming and they were truly surprising and shocking. But to be honest it all got a bit too confusing for me at the major point of reveal as everything was coming forth in one sentence after another, and I found myself having to reread paragraphs several times to make sure I had all the connections and pieces of the puzzle correctly joined. Maybe stretching this out just that little bit more in order to give the reader time to digest something before another thing was made known would have been better. Aside from this issue, I experienced towards the end I did really really enjoy The Lost Village. It’s a great read that fills you with a range of emotions but in the end you will be pleased with the eventual outcome.
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