The Art of Falling

How many works of literature can you think of in which fathers and daughters are reunited after a long time thinking each other lost? At least two plays by Shakespeare, A Winters Tale and Pericles come to mind, and then of course there's The Railway Children -- "Daddy, oh my Daddy!". I don't know about you, but that always brings tears to my eyes. I think I'm especially vulnerable to all this because I lost my own father when I was young -- lost him twice, really, as he moved out when I was 16 and then died when I was 22. All this preamble is because of the theme of this book, the second one of Deborah Lawrenson's I've read in as many weeks. In the first one, Songs of Blue and Gold, a daughter is seeking for her mother's past, while in this one a daughter is looking for some indication of what happened to her father, who walked out when she was seventeen, some twenty years earlier. Isabel has never fully recovered from the pain and uncertainty of his loss, and neither she nor her angry, bitter mother have any idea where he went. So when Isabel gets an invitation, out of the blue, to attend a ceremony in his honour in a small Italian village, she decides to go and see if she can gather any information about his links with Italy, a country he used to talk to her about when she was a child. This first visit brings her little further information, but enough to make her decide to take several months off from her job, return to Italy, and really explore all the possibilities. Of course this quest takes her in many unexpected directions, and leads her eventually to a kind of fulfillment she never really thought would be possible. Interspersed with Isabel's story is that of her father Tom, who, posted to Italy in World War Two, falls in love with the country and the people, and with one young woman in particular. Despite his return to England, he cannot forget the great potential happiness her has left behind.
Deborah Lawrenson evokes well the horrors of Italy in wartime as well as its great beauties and pleasures in a time of peace. Of course there is a happy ending, but what exactly that is you will have to read this novel to find out.