One Italian Summer

“If you'd have asked my mother, Who do you belong to, the answer would have been Katy. “You're my everything,” she'd tell me. “You're my whole world.”

Not everyone has that closeness to their mother. But taking that as a jumping off point, after Carol dies, Katy is bereft, adrift without the person she considered her soulmate, the one she turned to and depended on to help her through life. She has also begun to question her commitment to her husband, so on an impulse, she decides to take the trip to Italy she and her mother had planned before her death. Before we know it, Katy's moved into a quaint, family-run hotel in the heart of Positano, a village where her mother once spent a summer, in hopes of rebooting her life and also getting a better understanding of what her mother had been like as a young woman like herself.

And that's when things get interesting. Because through the narrative device of magical realism, Serle imagines a scenario in which Carol is magically alive, 30 and carefree, and the mother and daughter can meet again, this time as new friends and companions. Heartfelt, sad in places, yet ultimately life-affirming like the author's well-beloved In Five Years, this novel also offers vivid, rich descriptions of both the sights and tastes of Positano and Capri, making you long to take your own Amalfi coast vacation.

At time, I found Katy's helplessness frustrating. It made her seem much more naïve and clueless than I would expect of someone her age. It takes her forever to catch on to what's really going on and the romance she embarks on with a handsome hotel developer detracted from the story. Instead I longed for more scenes between the mother and daughter and was disappointed whenever that relationship was put on the back burner in favor of less-interesting subplots. But I liked the over-all concept, being a sucker for time-travel stories and endlessly fascinated by the question of “what if” so if you're in the mood for a light summer read, I'd recommend adding this to your beach bag.

My thanks to NetGalley for an advanced reader copy of this book.