Helpful Score: 1
This falls into the not particularly outstanding, but a good read, nonetheless category -- mainly because of the setting and time period (Dublin, London, and Italy before and during WWII). I wasnt particularly drawn to either of the characters, though, because they seemed so hard to get close to: Bella, a middle aged, mousey woman whose overbearing father arranges for her to take a job as a governess in Italy; Edward, the little boys enigmatic piano teacher whos ended up in Italy to escape being convicted of a murder. This is also a story within a story and so the action jumps back and forth between time periods and locations, introducing readers to a third major character Bellas grand-daughter Anna as she pieces together bits and pieces of her grandmothers mysterious past. What kept me reading had less to do with the plot and much more to do with the details and descriptions of life in Fascist Italy during WWII.
