Resumo de The Italian Garden

The Italian Garden
By Susan Moody
Hodder & Stoughton, 1994
Hardcover, 391 pages
ISBN # 0-340-60913-3
$29.95

When Hannah Cartwright was an inexperienced 22-year-old woman, not yet versed in the ways of the world, she spent a summer in Italy with her best friend Susie. It was during that Italian summer that Hannah made the acquaintance of Susie?s handsome cousin, Lucas, a man well accustomed to the ways of the flesh and more than willing to teach Hannah what he knew.

Hannah is eager to learn from him so her and Lucas become lovers over the course of the summer. Soon Hannah begins to discover physical pleasures beyond her wildest dreams.

The summer days are full of unbearable heat and the nights explode with uninhibited love and reckless abandon. But violence and jealousy is also hanging about the ivy that covers the old Italian mansions and the beautiful gardens that surround them. Imminent disaster is hanging over the occupants of the mansions and it strikes at the end of the summer.

Now it is 25 years later and 47-year-old Hannah lives a quiet, predictable life in London. Divorced, she has a daughter named Lucinda in her twenties and owns a small shop where she sells miniature dollhouses. Hannah is content with her life if not ecstatically happy.

All of the sudden odd things begin to happen to Hannah to shake up her ordinary existence. When Lucinda is put in the way of danger, Hannah has reason to believe that there is a connection between these current disturbing events and what happened to her that summer in Italy long ago.

Forced to dreg up memories of her time with Lucas, Hannah also must force herself to remember the terrible thing that ended the summer and changed her life forever.

But soon memories are not enough and Hannah must do the unthinkable- she must return to the Italian garden where her innocence was lost and face both the demons from her past that haunt her dreams as well as the truth of what that fateful summer spent in Italy long ago did to her life and the lives of others involved.

Susan Moody has written many novels but this is the only one of hers I have read so far. But I was hooked from very early on although at times the book can be a bit wordy. I give this book a big thumbs up!

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