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The Way Back to Florence
In 1937 Freddie (English), Isabella (Italian) and Oskar (a German Jew) become friends at an art school in Florence where they are taught by the dictatorial but magus-like Maestro and his sinister fascist assistant Fosco. When war arrives Freddie returns to England to become the pilot of a Lancaster bomber. Oskar, now a dancer, has moved to Paris where he escapes the 1942 roundup of Jews and arrives in Italy with his young daughter Esme. Isabella remains in Florence where she continues to paint. Until she is called upon by Maestro to forge an old master painting, apparently at the behest of the Führer himself, and as a result is seen as a Nazi collaborator by her neighbours.
The murderous skies over Germany and a war-torn Italy in the grip of Nazi occupation provide the setting for this novel about the love of a separated husband and his wife and the love of a man for his young daughter. Freddie and Oskar both hope to find their way back to Florence. But Florence’s heritage of preserving the identity and continuity of the past has never before been so under threat.
The murderous skies over Germany and a war-torn Italy in the grip of Nazi occupation provide the setting for this novel about the love of a separated husband and his wife and the love of a man for his young daughter. Freddie and Oskar both hope to find their way back to Florence. But Florence’s heritage of preserving the identity and continuity of the past has never before been so under threat.
490 pages, Paperback
First published June 17, 2015
About the author
Glenn Haybittle
10 books76 followersLondon - Lerici - Florence.
Represented by Annabel Merullo at PFD.
The Way Back to Florence is my first novel.
Represented by Annabel Merullo at PFD.
The Way Back to Florence is my first novel.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 87 reviews
July 24, 2017
I read this in situ so to speak (often in a hammock outside a Tuscan farmhouse overlooking a tiered olive grove) and I loved it from start to finish. Alex Preston calls it, “a quite brilliant novel of love, art and war told with extraordinary delicacy and poise” and I fully agree. The novel essentially consists of three narratives, sown together with fluid artistry, and the chapters are all very short, rather like All the Light We Cannot See.
The overriding intent here is on narrative drive, engrossing storytelling and emotional impact/empathy. The story motors along in a gripping immersive fashion. The writing is fresh and sensual and vibrant as if the author has only just experienced personally everything he writes about. It’s like a painting before the paint has quite dried, the colours still glistening in their oil. It reminded me in its page-turning quality of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos. There’s a similar premise at the beginning – an aspiring female artist who is almost denied pursuing her dream because of the misogynistic culture she lives in (“Fascism is like some giant national parade in honour of the male erection.”). To be admitted into the atelier where she wants to study Isabella has to submit to a demeaning pact – she must pose nude for the maestro to admit her as a student. At the atelier she meets her future husband, the English Freddie, and a German Jew called Oskar. The three will become good friends until war separates them.
Identity is a constant theme, or more specifically identity achieved through intimacy. Intimacy as how we achieve identity. And secrets, of which all three characters possess a dangerous one, are a big part of identity and intimacy. “The snow, the effect of concealment and secrecy it creates, makes him think of the brutality of the wartime legislation to forbid and violently extract secrets. It is as if the hushed white landscape is showing how sacrosanct are our secrets, how much of our vitality is bound up in them."
It also dramatises movingly how war makes individuals experience themselves as ghosts while they’re still alive and makes everyday life as precious and bracing as sea air but also as fraught as a haunted house at night. “Freddie is now officially the enemy. His unauthorised presence in the city a tightrope along which he has to walk back and forth every day. The streets bristle with black shirted men carrying guns who believe themselves taller than they are. Everything he carries within himself becomes secret, something that gives off illegal light and heat inside him. Sometimes he feels like a shadow that glows with this light, this heat.”
I was a bit worried I might not enjoy the Bomber Command sections of the novel but soon discovered they were no less exciting and engrossing than Oskar’s attempts to protect his young daughter from the Gestapo and Isabella’s perilous plight of having to paint the same SS officer who is in charge of finding the stolen painting she is forging to save the original in Florence. Whereas in A God in Ruins Kate Atkinson gives an overview of life as a pilot in a bomber, Haybittle provides a much more immediate and intimate experience of what these men went through, the surreal juxtaposition of life on the base followed hours later by flying over Nazi Germany is done brilliantly. “The death beams slide around the sky like dancers on ice. As if exchanging partners in this vaulted ballroom of coloured smoke. He imagines a Strauss waltz accompanying the dance of the Nazi searchlights.”
Last month I read another couple of WWII novels, Chris Cleave’s Everyone Brave is Forgiven and Virginia Bailey’s Early One Morning. I enjoyed this one far more than either of those, essentially because this is a much more exciting story but also because I felt Haybittle was more in command of his design, his characters and the fundamentals of storytelling - perhaps because he never strains to be too clever, and shows more artistry in withholding hindsight, his own wise-after-the-event knowledge from his characters. They are all always in the moment, never bogusly wise after the event. In fact I’m not sure why this isn’t better known, given the recent popularity of WWII novels. It perhaps lags a bit around the half way mark for a fifty page stretch but the ending was brilliant and made me cry and any novel that can do that gets five stars from me. Whole-heartedly recommended.
September 4, 2017
Henry James once said novels deal with the “palpable present-intimate” and the two novels I’ve been reading this month, this and The Night Watch, are both massively successful at enthralling through an intimacy of observation. Both novels are set during WW2, both are superbly researched, soundly constructed, character-driven and intelligently eloquent without indulging in any literary sleights of hand or innovative technique. In short, both are excellent examples of riveting straightforward storytelling.
The Way Back to Florence is an eloquently written and moving WW2 novel set predominantly in Florence, Italy. It focuses on three characters all of whom are forced by the dictates of fascism to forge identity in different ways. One of the novel’s themes is the struggle to preserve identity – as bombs drop and the outward world changes its shape it becomes increasingly difficult for the characters to keep their inner shape. Memory, of course, is the medium of identity and the precarious nature of memory plays a big part in the narrative. “Florence exists to educate our memory,” says one character. War, in this novel, constantly threatens to erase memory. Isabella, a painter and the novel’s central female character, observes while looking at bomb damage – “The ripped open houses with their exposed arrangements, their laid bare secrets, are like portraits. Each one has its own individual facial expression. More identity is on display in the midst of the destruction. More intimacy. It makes her realise how vulnerable these achievements are. Identity. Intimacy.”
Her husband Freddie’s sense of self is represented by a portrait of him painted by Isabella and the fate of this painting will mirror in many ways the fate of Freddie himself. Paintings, an emblem of the transcendent power of memory, are often lost or defaced or forged in this novel. Freddie and Isabella meet at a Florentine art school where they study together. They forge their romantic bond during breaks when they go and sit in the nearby English cemetery – not the most auspicious place to put down roots. By 1943 they have become memories to each other. “She steps out of the silver dress and takes a simple black dress from the wardrobe where some of Freddie’s clothes still hang. She tries to remember if Freddie began buttoning his shirt from the top or the bottom. She tries to remember him tying his shoelaces. The images she sees of her husband nowadays are washed out and ghostly as if consisting predominantly of reflected light.”
It’s also a novel about displacement and the concurrent yearning for homecoming. War, while ostensibly defending the concept of home, also of course threatens its very existence. The measure of war’s ability to remove all the securities of home is a constant feature of this novel, most chillingly when the narrative takes us to the death camps of Mauthausen and Auschwitz.
It begins with Freddie Hartson, a Lancaster bomber pilot who has a shaming secret and is told in the briefing hut that tonight’s mission is Florence. Florence, we learn, is where his wife, a painter, lives. The target is not far from the art school where he met Isabella and where his former teacher still works. He has to drop bombs on his own home. Before every operation he has to write a farewell letter to Isabella, his wife, in case he doesn’t return. “When he thinks of his wife now it is like walking barefoot down steps to the sea at night. A secretive act. A moment of wonder he treats with caution as though shielding a buffeted flame.”
Life at the station and especially on board the aircraft is vividly evoked, especially the bomb run itself with all its perils and mayhem – “The radar directed flak intensifies. Like swarms of angry red-and-yellow-eyed snakes slithering up invisible ropes in the sky. The sky around them is a glittering maelstrom of light. The stars pale into insignificance. Down below the city is lit up in sections as shockwaves fan out in kaleidoscopic bursts. Shell smoke rising up from the ground. On his right a burst of flame and a thick guttering of black smoke lit up by the geometry of the searchlights.” The novel provides a moving insight into what those men went through – the dangers of ops over Germany, the fears, but also the moving nature of the fellowship shared by these airmen. There are some memorable scenes too, like when, in thick fog, they nearly land the aircraft on a Luftwaffe base in France, thinking England is below and when they have to crash land in the North Sea.
Isabella is painting when the bombs fall. Later, an SS officer takes a fancy to Isabella at a party and confides that it is his job at present to find two famous paintings that Mussolini has promised to Hitler but that have gone missing. Isabella’s teacher will later persuade her to forge one of these paintings, Pontormo’s portrait of St Anthony, patron saint of lost things. Meanwhile Isabella has had a brief guilty fling with a member of the resistance and has to rely on the SS officer when she is arrested by the sinister Fascist secret police. The tension mounts as she plays a dangerous game.
The third central character is Oskar, a friend of Freddie and Isabella’s from their pre-war time together at a Florence art school. He’s a German Jew whose sense of self is bound up in protecting his young daughter. When his wife is caught in the Paris round-up of Jews Oskar manages to escape with his daughter. He makes his way south to Italy but his arrival coincides with the Nazi occupation of Italy. Needless to say, the Gestapo is never far away. The author does a great job of making you fearful for Oskar and Esme.
Florence, the city, is the novel’s other major character. We get a beautifully visual portrait of the city where I live. “The sky is a virginal blue translucence as though bereft for a fleeting moment of the effects of both light and darkness. A crimson streak smoulders over the outline of the hills, a simmering bloodline. There is a solitary canoe on the water. A cold white sheen rises from the water. She holds her breath. As if to stop any more time from passing, to stop the future happening. The peacefulness of the morning is almost heartbreaking in its fragility.”
There’s also a lot of warmth and wit in this novel, momentum and vitality. It’s written with lots of heart and an imagination at high tide. And we encounter both the kindness and cruelty of strangers in the atmosphere of fear and mistrust that exists in an occupied country. One scene particularly when a woman makes her young son cajole a little Jewish girl into church to see if she crosses herself. The woman has her eye on the reward offered for information on fugitive Jews.
Architecturally it plays safe. Emphasis is on storytelling – following a straightforward flight plan, rather like the flight plans of the Lancasters themselves when they set off on an operation. It’s not a novel of versatile innovation or structural sleights of hand. It abides by its limits and as a result is a thoroughly engaging novel pulsing with moments of high tension, poignant sadness and life affirming beauty which also at times illuminates some of the more shrouded areas of human motive.
The Way Back to Florence is an eloquently written and moving WW2 novel set predominantly in Florence, Italy. It focuses on three characters all of whom are forced by the dictates of fascism to forge identity in different ways. One of the novel’s themes is the struggle to preserve identity – as bombs drop and the outward world changes its shape it becomes increasingly difficult for the characters to keep their inner shape. Memory, of course, is the medium of identity and the precarious nature of memory plays a big part in the narrative. “Florence exists to educate our memory,” says one character. War, in this novel, constantly threatens to erase memory. Isabella, a painter and the novel’s central female character, observes while looking at bomb damage – “The ripped open houses with their exposed arrangements, their laid bare secrets, are like portraits. Each one has its own individual facial expression. More identity is on display in the midst of the destruction. More intimacy. It makes her realise how vulnerable these achievements are. Identity. Intimacy.”
Her husband Freddie’s sense of self is represented by a portrait of him painted by Isabella and the fate of this painting will mirror in many ways the fate of Freddie himself. Paintings, an emblem of the transcendent power of memory, are often lost or defaced or forged in this novel. Freddie and Isabella meet at a Florentine art school where they study together. They forge their romantic bond during breaks when they go and sit in the nearby English cemetery – not the most auspicious place to put down roots. By 1943 they have become memories to each other. “She steps out of the silver dress and takes a simple black dress from the wardrobe where some of Freddie’s clothes still hang. She tries to remember if Freddie began buttoning his shirt from the top or the bottom. She tries to remember him tying his shoelaces. The images she sees of her husband nowadays are washed out and ghostly as if consisting predominantly of reflected light.”
It’s also a novel about displacement and the concurrent yearning for homecoming. War, while ostensibly defending the concept of home, also of course threatens its very existence. The measure of war’s ability to remove all the securities of home is a constant feature of this novel, most chillingly when the narrative takes us to the death camps of Mauthausen and Auschwitz.
It begins with Freddie Hartson, a Lancaster bomber pilot who has a shaming secret and is told in the briefing hut that tonight’s mission is Florence. Florence, we learn, is where his wife, a painter, lives. The target is not far from the art school where he met Isabella and where his former teacher still works. He has to drop bombs on his own home. Before every operation he has to write a farewell letter to Isabella, his wife, in case he doesn’t return. “When he thinks of his wife now it is like walking barefoot down steps to the sea at night. A secretive act. A moment of wonder he treats with caution as though shielding a buffeted flame.”
Life at the station and especially on board the aircraft is vividly evoked, especially the bomb run itself with all its perils and mayhem – “The radar directed flak intensifies. Like swarms of angry red-and-yellow-eyed snakes slithering up invisible ropes in the sky. The sky around them is a glittering maelstrom of light. The stars pale into insignificance. Down below the city is lit up in sections as shockwaves fan out in kaleidoscopic bursts. Shell smoke rising up from the ground. On his right a burst of flame and a thick guttering of black smoke lit up by the geometry of the searchlights.” The novel provides a moving insight into what those men went through – the dangers of ops over Germany, the fears, but also the moving nature of the fellowship shared by these airmen. There are some memorable scenes too, like when, in thick fog, they nearly land the aircraft on a Luftwaffe base in France, thinking England is below and when they have to crash land in the North Sea.
Isabella is painting when the bombs fall. Later, an SS officer takes a fancy to Isabella at a party and confides that it is his job at present to find two famous paintings that Mussolini has promised to Hitler but that have gone missing. Isabella’s teacher will later persuade her to forge one of these paintings, Pontormo’s portrait of St Anthony, patron saint of lost things. Meanwhile Isabella has had a brief guilty fling with a member of the resistance and has to rely on the SS officer when she is arrested by the sinister Fascist secret police. The tension mounts as she plays a dangerous game.
The third central character is Oskar, a friend of Freddie and Isabella’s from their pre-war time together at a Florence art school. He’s a German Jew whose sense of self is bound up in protecting his young daughter. When his wife is caught in the Paris round-up of Jews Oskar manages to escape with his daughter. He makes his way south to Italy but his arrival coincides with the Nazi occupation of Italy. Needless to say, the Gestapo is never far away. The author does a great job of making you fearful for Oskar and Esme.
Florence, the city, is the novel’s other major character. We get a beautifully visual portrait of the city where I live. “The sky is a virginal blue translucence as though bereft for a fleeting moment of the effects of both light and darkness. A crimson streak smoulders over the outline of the hills, a simmering bloodline. There is a solitary canoe on the water. A cold white sheen rises from the water. She holds her breath. As if to stop any more time from passing, to stop the future happening. The peacefulness of the morning is almost heartbreaking in its fragility.”
There’s also a lot of warmth and wit in this novel, momentum and vitality. It’s written with lots of heart and an imagination at high tide. And we encounter both the kindness and cruelty of strangers in the atmosphere of fear and mistrust that exists in an occupied country. One scene particularly when a woman makes her young son cajole a little Jewish girl into church to see if she crosses herself. The woman has her eye on the reward offered for information on fugitive Jews.
Architecturally it plays safe. Emphasis is on storytelling – following a straightforward flight plan, rather like the flight plans of the Lancasters themselves when they set off on an operation. It’s not a novel of versatile innovation or structural sleights of hand. It abides by its limits and as a result is a thoroughly engaging novel pulsing with moments of high tension, poignant sadness and life affirming beauty which also at times illuminates some of the more shrouded areas of human motive.
August 10, 2016
Update: $1.99 Kindle sale right now!!! This book is WONDERFUL!!!!!!
Terrific WWII Historical fiction book whom I first learned from Violet. Art...love...war!
Florence, a renaissance city in the heart of Tuscany is one of the most popular travel
cities in Italy. I haven't had the pleasure... Yet?/!
On the front cover of the paperback book "The Way Back to Florence", by Glenn Haybittle
is a quote by author Alex Preston of "In Love and War",which captures the beauty and essence.
"A quite brilliant novel of art, love, and war told with extraordinary delicacy and poise".
****As a reader, reading this review... if you do not want to read any more of 'my chatter'....
Stop reading. Between the 'BLURP' and Alan Preston's quote. It's all you need to know.
This is MY FAVORITE BOOK I've read all year!!! And by far, one of the best WW 2
Historical Fiction books I've read. ...,'period'!
Mussolini, leader of the National Fascist Party, was ruling the country as Prime Minister from
1922 to 1943. He ruled constitutionally until 1925, when he dropped all pretense of democracy and set up a legal dictatorship.
This story begins in 1943, with the invasion of Italy. The allied bombers target Florence:
" The air raid siren begins shrieking"
"The grumbling noise gains in intensity".
"Window frames rattle".
"Never have the planes been this low in the sky before".
During some of the battles, a loud siren would 'wail', and everything stopped. The locals went out to retrieve the dead and wounded ....( children and women)...
People would sit and talk with one another - drink coffee- Exchange cigarettes as if nothing was wrong... then, the siren would blast again. New explosions would make locals scream.
Each one the most primordial and sundering noise to endure.
Solemn faces on children in the streets, grimy, injured, sick, hungry. Buildings gone. Mountains
of smoking rubble, rotting garbage, the stink of plaster, feet black and swollen....
A WAR ... Murderous WAR, Nazi occupation.... can't 'just' provide the setting for a story told ...
no matter how heartfelt, complex, and engaging it is to read about each of the character.
WAR is WAR....'many victims died!!! WAR... is 'never' simply 'a setting' for me, knowing people died.
At the same time,
The story is fascinating, interesting, and intimate, with characters that make your heart melt.
Author, Glenn Haybittle sketches honest portraits of everyday people ...so much so.. It's easy
to place yourself in the story with them. (in the art studio, in the sky with the pilots, on a beach
with friends)
I took many detours while reading this novel. I'd read about a location in the story.. and before
you knew it.. I was reading about places I wanted to visit in Florence...and more history
about the war in Italy. [Piazza della Signoria, Loggia die Lanzi, The American Cemetary south of Florence, they Ponte Vecchio bridge, , museums, Churches, etc.]. I even took note of a movie I'd like to rent: "Tea With Mussolini".
The story is compelling and beautiful.
Isabelle the Italian artist.
Freddie, her husband, English, and a pilot of the Lancaster bomber.
Oskar, a German Jew.. a dancer, and father who does
whatever is needed to protect his child Esme.
*During this time period....( highlighted through the character Isabelle), women were not
usually respected as talented and capable artist. Isabelle was a strong character..
and moved forward with her success - but even she, desired approval for her work by her long time studio teacher..'Maestro'.
I couldn't help but think of the artist, Margaret Keane... ( a popular famous artist in the 60's and 70's) . Margaret continues to paint, and lives here in the Bay Area near me today ...
but she, too, was another female artist that for whatever reason, suppressed her voice
and allowed her husband to take credit for her work.
I can't imagine anyone not losing themselves in this novel... swimming in it... and coming away fully satisfied and uplifted.
Last: Thank You Violet, for the gift of this book. I had no idea how much I'd get swept away.
Terrific WWII Historical fiction book whom I first learned from Violet. Art...love...war!
Florence, a renaissance city in the heart of Tuscany is one of the most popular travel
cities in Italy. I haven't had the pleasure... Yet?/!
On the front cover of the paperback book "The Way Back to Florence", by Glenn Haybittle
is a quote by author Alex Preston of "In Love and War",which captures the beauty and essence.
"A quite brilliant novel of art, love, and war told with extraordinary delicacy and poise".
****As a reader, reading this review... if you do not want to read any more of 'my chatter'....
Stop reading. Between the 'BLURP' and Alan Preston's quote. It's all you need to know.
This is MY FAVORITE BOOK I've read all year!!! And by far, one of the best WW 2
Historical Fiction books I've read. ...,'period'!
Mussolini, leader of the National Fascist Party, was ruling the country as Prime Minister from
1922 to 1943. He ruled constitutionally until 1925, when he dropped all pretense of democracy and set up a legal dictatorship.
This story begins in 1943, with the invasion of Italy. The allied bombers target Florence:
" The air raid siren begins shrieking"
"The grumbling noise gains in intensity".
"Window frames rattle".
"Never have the planes been this low in the sky before".
During some of the battles, a loud siren would 'wail', and everything stopped. The locals went out to retrieve the dead and wounded ....( children and women)...
People would sit and talk with one another - drink coffee- Exchange cigarettes as if nothing was wrong... then, the siren would blast again. New explosions would make locals scream.
Each one the most primordial and sundering noise to endure.
Solemn faces on children in the streets, grimy, injured, sick, hungry. Buildings gone. Mountains
of smoking rubble, rotting garbage, the stink of plaster, feet black and swollen....
A WAR ... Murderous WAR, Nazi occupation.... can't 'just' provide the setting for a story told ...
no matter how heartfelt, complex, and engaging it is to read about each of the character.
WAR is WAR....'many victims died!!! WAR... is 'never' simply 'a setting' for me, knowing people died.
At the same time,
The story is fascinating, interesting, and intimate, with characters that make your heart melt.
Author, Glenn Haybittle sketches honest portraits of everyday people ...so much so.. It's easy
to place yourself in the story with them. (in the art studio, in the sky with the pilots, on a beach
with friends)
I took many detours while reading this novel. I'd read about a location in the story.. and before
you knew it.. I was reading about places I wanted to visit in Florence...and more history
about the war in Italy. [Piazza della Signoria, Loggia die Lanzi, The American Cemetary south of Florence, they Ponte Vecchio bridge, , museums, Churches, etc.]. I even took note of a movie I'd like to rent: "Tea With Mussolini".
The story is compelling and beautiful.
Isabelle the Italian artist.
Freddie, her husband, English, and a pilot of the Lancaster bomber.
Oskar, a German Jew.. a dancer, and father who does
whatever is needed to protect his child Esme.
*During this time period....( highlighted through the character Isabelle), women were not
usually respected as talented and capable artist. Isabelle was a strong character..
and moved forward with her success - but even she, desired approval for her work by her long time studio teacher..'Maestro'.
I couldn't help but think of the artist, Margaret Keane... ( a popular famous artist in the 60's and 70's) . Margaret continues to paint, and lives here in the Bay Area near me today ...
but she, too, was another female artist that for whatever reason, suppressed her voice
and allowed her husband to take credit for her work.
I can't imagine anyone not losing themselves in this novel... swimming in it... and coming away fully satisfied and uplifted.
Last: Thank You Violet, for the gift of this book. I had no idea how much I'd get swept away.
July 7, 2017
I'm not sure why, but I didn't always think of Italy when I thought about WWII. It wasn't until several years ago while on a vacation in Italy that I realized the impact . We visited Monte Cassino and graves of US soldiers there . But I have to admit that I didn't know very much about Florence and the war. So this book brought yet another facet of the war with its beautifully written depiction of the effect of the war on Florence and a group of characters living there . I really liked the descriptive writing from the beginning which just got better and better. It took me a while to connect with the characters, but once I did I couldn't help but care about them and be concerned for their fate.
Through alternating narratives we come to know Isabella, an artist, her English pilot husband Freddie, Oskar, the German Jew, who'd rather dance than paint and eventually his 6 year old daughter Esme. There is an expanded cast of characters who interact with these main characters as the story progresses. The alternating narratives work so well here as we see the harrowing impact of the war on Isabella, drawn into a scheme to forge old paintings to save the originals from the Nazis, on Freddie as he engages in his bombing missions, and on Oskar and Esme as they seek refuge and safety. This is a story of war but it also is a story of relationships - husband and wife, teacher and student. It also wonderfully depicts the friendships that are fostered in military . But my favorite is the beautiful father and daughter relationship of Oskar and Esme. It's heartbreaking and touching as they maneuver through the danger.
The writing is very good and the story is compelling. It's hard to believe this is a debut novel. It's not easy to read at times, though. There are arrests and torture and death, glimpses into concentration camps which provide such a realistic picture of the time, and the day to day experiences of people trying to survive the war. While this is fiction, I couldn't help but think that these characters might just reflect the courage and the resilience of some real people in Florence during the war. I definitely recommend it to readers of historical fiction. Once again I thank Goodreads friends Esil and Diane for what has become our monthly buddy read.
I received an advanced copy of this book from Chenye Walk through NetGalley.
Through alternating narratives we come to know Isabella, an artist, her English pilot husband Freddie, Oskar, the German Jew, who'd rather dance than paint and eventually his 6 year old daughter Esme. There is an expanded cast of characters who interact with these main characters as the story progresses. The alternating narratives work so well here as we see the harrowing impact of the war on Isabella, drawn into a scheme to forge old paintings to save the originals from the Nazis, on Freddie as he engages in his bombing missions, and on Oskar and Esme as they seek refuge and safety. This is a story of war but it also is a story of relationships - husband and wife, teacher and student. It also wonderfully depicts the friendships that are fostered in military . But my favorite is the beautiful father and daughter relationship of Oskar and Esme. It's heartbreaking and touching as they maneuver through the danger.
The writing is very good and the story is compelling. It's hard to believe this is a debut novel. It's not easy to read at times, though. There are arrests and torture and death, glimpses into concentration camps which provide such a realistic picture of the time, and the day to day experiences of people trying to survive the war. While this is fiction, I couldn't help but think that these characters might just reflect the courage and the resilience of some real people in Florence during the war. I definitely recommend it to readers of historical fiction. Once again I thank Goodreads friends Esil and Diane for what has become our monthly buddy read.
I received an advanced copy of this book from Chenye Walk through NetGalley.
February 19, 2022
The scope of this novel is hugely impressive. We are taken on bombing raids to Berlin, into the world of art theft in Florence, to partisan battles in the hills of Tuscany, to the offices of the secret police in Florence, to Italian internment camps and to the Nazi death camps. And yet for all the pervasive horror of war this is essentially an uplifting novel written with sustained imaginative vitality about how people touch each other and how humanity prevails.
We see WW2 through three perspectives – these are three friends who met at art college in Florence before the war. Freddie becomes the pilot of a Lancaster bomber, Isabella, his Italian wife, is a painter in Florence and Oskar, a German Jew, is trying to avoid the Gestapo in Italy. All three narratives are utterly compelling in their different ways. Isabella is dragged into the world of art forgery and the fascist/partisan conflict; Oskar and his young daughter are hunted by the Nazis and have to depend on the kindness of strangers and are constantly in fear of their treachery (huge rewards were offered for information leading to the arrest of Jews). And Freddie is just trying to stay alive - the account of life in Bomber Command is a brilliant feat of imagination – a succession of thrilling set pieces in which you feel you’re up there in the plane. The control of the suspense throughout is done with great skill. You genuinely worry for the safety of the characters. Oskar’s efforts to keep his daughter safe is a very moving account of the love of a father for his daughter, just as Freddie and Isabella’s story is a moving depiction of the love between a separated husband and wife. It’s also a brilliant portrait of Italy and in particular Florence itself. I didn’t want it to end. Fully recommended. Along with All the Light We Cannot See my favourite read of 2015.
We see WW2 through three perspectives – these are three friends who met at art college in Florence before the war. Freddie becomes the pilot of a Lancaster bomber, Isabella, his Italian wife, is a painter in Florence and Oskar, a German Jew, is trying to avoid the Gestapo in Italy. All three narratives are utterly compelling in their different ways. Isabella is dragged into the world of art forgery and the fascist/partisan conflict; Oskar and his young daughter are hunted by the Nazis and have to depend on the kindness of strangers and are constantly in fear of their treachery (huge rewards were offered for information leading to the arrest of Jews). And Freddie is just trying to stay alive - the account of life in Bomber Command is a brilliant feat of imagination – a succession of thrilling set pieces in which you feel you’re up there in the plane. The control of the suspense throughout is done with great skill. You genuinely worry for the safety of the characters. Oskar’s efforts to keep his daughter safe is a very moving account of the love of a father for his daughter, just as Freddie and Isabella’s story is a moving depiction of the love between a separated husband and wife. It’s also a brilliant portrait of Italy and in particular Florence itself. I didn’t want it to end. Fully recommended. Along with All the Light We Cannot See my favourite read of 2015.
July 8, 2017
They first met in Florence at an art class given by a renowned painter known as the maestro. Isabelle, Freddy and Oskar became friends though only Isabelle shows any promise as a painter. Their lives would become entwined in different ways through the war, as Freddy would return to England and pi!ot a Lancaster for the RAF. Isabelle would remain in Florence, her home, and Oskar as a Jew would take a different path. A dangerous time for all as the Nazis move into Italy.
I started reading this and my first thought through ten or so segments was that this was a nice story but one in which I didn't feel much emotion. As the author continued to set the scene, added additional characters, not only did the writing get stronger but I became invested in the lives of these people, the dangers they were encountering, wherever they were located. The descriptive touches we're top notch, allowing the reader to completely visualize the setting and the scenarios. What made this different from other I have read about WWII, is not only the gradually unveilng of the full dangers on our characters but how extremely dangerous was every decision they made. There were so many different factions working in the same place, one never knew who to trust, who was as they appeared to be, who was on what side? The author also was very fair because he showed the good with the bad, a very balanced viewpoint showing even among Nazis there were some who helped in small ways when they could, towns people who should have pulled together but instead acted n their own self interest. Can't imagine living where every move you made was analyzed, when acting in a certain way could mean your life, where you had to watch everything you did, who you talked to, and what you said. Mindboggling.
Some of this was hard to read, the concentration camps, the torture, but the author tried to follow the darkness with some light. A fairly long book, but the short chapters, narrated by each of the three leading characters, read like a much shorter book,the pages literally flew by. A first book, a talented author and characters in which I became invested. What a journey this was, but one I was glad to have taken. Reading this with Angela and Esil was even more special.
ARC from Netgalley.
I started reading this and my first thought through ten or so segments was that this was a nice story but one in which I didn't feel much emotion. As the author continued to set the scene, added additional characters, not only did the writing get stronger but I became invested in the lives of these people, the dangers they were encountering, wherever they were located. The descriptive touches we're top notch, allowing the reader to completely visualize the setting and the scenarios. What made this different from other I have read about WWII, is not only the gradually unveilng of the full dangers on our characters but how extremely dangerous was every decision they made. There were so many different factions working in the same place, one never knew who to trust, who was as they appeared to be, who was on what side? The author also was very fair because he showed the good with the bad, a very balanced viewpoint showing even among Nazis there were some who helped in small ways when they could, towns people who should have pulled together but instead acted n their own self interest. Can't imagine living where every move you made was analyzed, when acting in a certain way could mean your life, where you had to watch everything you did, who you talked to, and what you said. Mindboggling.
Some of this was hard to read, the concentration camps, the torture, but the author tried to follow the darkness with some light. A fairly long book, but the short chapters, narrated by each of the three leading characters, read like a much shorter book,the pages literally flew by. A first book, a talented author and characters in which I became invested. What a journey this was, but one I was glad to have taken. Reading this with Angela and Esil was even more special.
ARC from Netgalley.
July 7, 2017
The Way Back to Florence started off as nothing special, but then it really grew on me. The story takes place during WWII and mostly in Florence. Italy was a complicated place during WWII, and this novel takes on those complications and their consequent human emotions. The initial focus is on Isabella and Freddy, a young married couple. Isabella is Italian and an aspiring artist. Freddy is British and Oxford educated. The war soon separates them. Isabella stays in Florence, while Freddy becomes a fighter pilot for England. The story gradually adds some additional perspectives -- characters connected to Isabella and Freddy in one way or another -- two of my favourites being displaced Jewish father and daughter Oscar and Esme. Initially, while the writing was good, the story felt a bit aimless and disorganized. But as it progressed, the author really managed to pull me in. This is not a romantic depiction of WWII. Nor is it a romance. The author depicts ordinary flawed people trying to survive, in a world taken over by brutal thugs. It's often not possible to know who to trust, neighbours turn each other in, and people surprise themselves with acts of courage and acts of betrayal. There are some graphically harrowing scenes, but mostly what's depicted is the mix of fear, uncertainty and courage that comes out in people in these dark times. The Way Back to Florence falls short of 5 stars because it starts off awkwardly and because there are a few loose ends that are left unexplained or incomplete. But this definitely falls into my pile of worthy WWII fiction, and I do tend to be fussy about historical fiction so it's not a big pile. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy. Thanks to GR friend Katie for being so enthusiastic about this book as I doubt it would have caught my attention. And thanks again to Angela and Diane for another excellent buddy read.
July 13, 2017
4.5 stars.
Often I wonder how I would have behaved during World War Two, especially in Nazi occupied countries. I imagine we all do. Would I have been brave enough to help people in need, to actively resist the Nazis? Or would I have just sat back and looked after my own skin and that of my family? In large part I suspect circumstances decide these things and that’s what happens to the two Italian women in this novel, neither of whom are uncommonly brave or politically motivated but both of whom are faced with difficult choices by circumstances. Isabella is a painter, married to an English husband who is the pilot of a Lancaster bomber and Melissa is her model. Melissa’s relationship with her boyfriend Francesco has been sabotaged by his snobbish Jewish mother. Melissa is working class and not good enough. When the Nazis arrive and the Jews lose all social standing Francesco’s mother is compelled to call upon Melissa for help.
For a while I was liking this but not quite loving it. The sections set in Florence I did love but the sections dwelling on the aircrew of a bomber less so. However there came a moment when I began to greatly warm to Freddie and his crew and then the novel really began to pick up pace and intensity. I was especially moved by the plight of the Jewish Oskar and his little girl. There’s a particularly memorable scene when they are on a cattle train heading to Auschwitz. It’s one of those novels that gets more and more gripping as it progresses, a novel that envelops you in its atmosphere and leaves you feeling sad when you’ve finished. It’s an ambitious novel and like a lot of ambitious novels it has its shortcomings – maybe there were a couple too many of the aircraft chapters for example. Against that there were many memorable images and scenes, some fabulous twists and the characters were alive and vivid and easy to get attached to.
Thanks to Netgalley.
Often I wonder how I would have behaved during World War Two, especially in Nazi occupied countries. I imagine we all do. Would I have been brave enough to help people in need, to actively resist the Nazis? Or would I have just sat back and looked after my own skin and that of my family? In large part I suspect circumstances decide these things and that’s what happens to the two Italian women in this novel, neither of whom are uncommonly brave or politically motivated but both of whom are faced with difficult choices by circumstances. Isabella is a painter, married to an English husband who is the pilot of a Lancaster bomber and Melissa is her model. Melissa’s relationship with her boyfriend Francesco has been sabotaged by his snobbish Jewish mother. Melissa is working class and not good enough. When the Nazis arrive and the Jews lose all social standing Francesco’s mother is compelled to call upon Melissa for help.
For a while I was liking this but not quite loving it. The sections set in Florence I did love but the sections dwelling on the aircrew of a bomber less so. However there came a moment when I began to greatly warm to Freddie and his crew and then the novel really began to pick up pace and intensity. I was especially moved by the plight of the Jewish Oskar and his little girl. There’s a particularly memorable scene when they are on a cattle train heading to Auschwitz. It’s one of those novels that gets more and more gripping as it progresses, a novel that envelops you in its atmosphere and leaves you feeling sad when you’ve finished. It’s an ambitious novel and like a lot of ambitious novels it has its shortcomings – maybe there were a couple too many of the aircraft chapters for example. Against that there were many memorable images and scenes, some fabulous twists and the characters were alive and vivid and easy to get attached to.
Thanks to Netgalley.
February 16, 2016
A truly satisfying read about the experience of World War 2 in Italy from the perspective of an artist, Isabella, and her English husband, Freddie, who met her as an art student in Florence and now captains a bomber crew with the RAF. Oskar is another key character, a close friend from their student days who is a German Jew now returning to Italy with his young daughter Esme to escape the Holocaust. The strength of these characters bonds of love sustains them in the face of the chaos and destructive forces of the war. In this debut novel, Haybittle does well not to overdo the romance element, nor to overwhelm the reader too much with the horrors or heroics of combat and survival. He makes art and aesthetic sensibility serve as a wonderful frame for the arc of the story, with Florence itself, a world treasure of Renaissance art and architecture, seeming to stand for all that is noble about civilization (“Florence exists to educate our memory”).
Isabella continues to work as a painter amidst the bombing and deprivations. It’s her only medium for being, “the act of painting like channelling clairvoyance down into her fingers”. Like the rest of the community she must negotiate the schemes and treachery of fascist authorities and anti-fascist resistance forces struggling for control of the community. Since the fall of Mussolini and the Allied landing in southern Italy, the Nazis have moved into the region. While they force Italy to submit their Jews for the Final Solution, they keep their hands clean of Geneva Convention violations by letting the local thugs in charge continue to carry out brutal imprisonment and torture of citizens. Isabelle gets involved in trying to protect masterpiece paintings from getting stolen by the Nazis and in helping Jews in hiding, and the trouble she gets in leads her to rely on the protection of a slimy aristocratic SS officer. Her bravery and the tense plotting made for a page turning reading experience.
I especially loved the alternating sections with Freddie’s activities. Despite significant readings in this area, it remains all but impossible to imagine how these guys kept doing their job of bombing missions despite the horrific losses from anti-aircraft and fighter plane attacks and from equipment failure. Haybittle does a great job making it real and plausible. The critical role of the sense of teamwork among the crew, the importance of humor and superstition, and various modes for relief of their stress between missions. That many of their bombs were killing civilians is an awful load we expected the airmen to bear. Freddie’s bond with his crewmen makes for heartbreak when some are lost and mentally demolished. His esthetic vision leads him to see beauty amid the terrors, as when the colors of the bombs and tracers appear like the chaos in a Turner painting. Sometimes near the target sight in Germany or Italy, it feels like he is entering a cathedral. On one run, the situation is imbued with a spiritual significance:
A searchlight catches the plane for an instant. The cockpit is awash with searing bluish brightness. As if a revelation is about to take place. As if an angel is about to appear. He can’t see the instrument panel. The finger of light has the aircraft in its grip. Holding her suspended above the city. As if she is perched on a tightrope. Visible to the whole of Berlin down below.
I can’t really share whether the author is going to let his characters survive or have them succumb to heroically fulfill the tragedy that is war. I can share a bit of uplift that Oskar experiences when he is among the resistance fighters in the woods near Florence.
The overwhelming feeling there by the stream was one of virtue. People were pared down to what was generous, selfless and clean in their natures. When we were staying in a church by the sea the priest spoke about war bringing forth miracles. About war not just as horror and deprivation. But of it creating moments, unrepeatable in peacetime, when it spurs an intimacy of fellowship that makes you feel proud of the human race. …War, grindingly, shifts one’s perspective from I to we.
For me the pleasure meter on this book was somewhere between the emotionally entertaining “The Nightingale” and the sublime artistry of “All the Light We Cannot See.” It did feel more realistic than either and covered a broader canvas than Russell’s tale of the plight of Italian refugees and partisans in “A Thread of Grace.” The wrenching divisions among families and communities over loyalty to the fascist cause brings back powerful memories of the Bertolucci masterpiece of a movie “Il Conformisto.” This book had the added boon of putting the places and art of Florence into the story. I have fond memories of the city from three weeks spent there when I was 16. I didn’t realize how much bombing damage it sustained or how close it came to more widespread destruction.
Isabella continues to work as a painter amidst the bombing and deprivations. It’s her only medium for being, “the act of painting like channelling clairvoyance down into her fingers”. Like the rest of the community she must negotiate the schemes and treachery of fascist authorities and anti-fascist resistance forces struggling for control of the community. Since the fall of Mussolini and the Allied landing in southern Italy, the Nazis have moved into the region. While they force Italy to submit their Jews for the Final Solution, they keep their hands clean of Geneva Convention violations by letting the local thugs in charge continue to carry out brutal imprisonment and torture of citizens. Isabelle gets involved in trying to protect masterpiece paintings from getting stolen by the Nazis and in helping Jews in hiding, and the trouble she gets in leads her to rely on the protection of a slimy aristocratic SS officer. Her bravery and the tense plotting made for a page turning reading experience.
I especially loved the alternating sections with Freddie’s activities. Despite significant readings in this area, it remains all but impossible to imagine how these guys kept doing their job of bombing missions despite the horrific losses from anti-aircraft and fighter plane attacks and from equipment failure. Haybittle does a great job making it real and plausible. The critical role of the sense of teamwork among the crew, the importance of humor and superstition, and various modes for relief of their stress between missions. That many of their bombs were killing civilians is an awful load we expected the airmen to bear. Freddie’s bond with his crewmen makes for heartbreak when some are lost and mentally demolished. His esthetic vision leads him to see beauty amid the terrors, as when the colors of the bombs and tracers appear like the chaos in a Turner painting. Sometimes near the target sight in Germany or Italy, it feels like he is entering a cathedral. On one run, the situation is imbued with a spiritual significance:
A searchlight catches the plane for an instant. The cockpit is awash with searing bluish brightness. As if a revelation is about to take place. As if an angel is about to appear. He can’t see the instrument panel. The finger of light has the aircraft in its grip. Holding her suspended above the city. As if she is perched on a tightrope. Visible to the whole of Berlin down below.
I can’t really share whether the author is going to let his characters survive or have them succumb to heroically fulfill the tragedy that is war. I can share a bit of uplift that Oskar experiences when he is among the resistance fighters in the woods near Florence.
The overwhelming feeling there by the stream was one of virtue. People were pared down to what was generous, selfless and clean in their natures. When we were staying in a church by the sea the priest spoke about war bringing forth miracles. About war not just as horror and deprivation. But of it creating moments, unrepeatable in peacetime, when it spurs an intimacy of fellowship that makes you feel proud of the human race. …War, grindingly, shifts one’s perspective from I to we.
For me the pleasure meter on this book was somewhere between the emotionally entertaining “The Nightingale” and the sublime artistry of “All the Light We Cannot See.” It did feel more realistic than either and covered a broader canvas than Russell’s tale of the plight of Italian refugees and partisans in “A Thread of Grace.” The wrenching divisions among families and communities over loyalty to the fascist cause brings back powerful memories of the Bertolucci masterpiece of a movie “Il Conformisto.” This book had the added boon of putting the places and art of Florence into the story. I have fond memories of the city from three weeks spent there when I was 16. I didn’t realize how much bombing damage it sustained or how close it came to more widespread destruction.
July 4, 2017
If someone asked me to describe this books I would say it is poetic, passionate, and fast paced. It went by way to quickly for my liking, I wanted it to never end. In this historical fiction novel you follow the lives of Freddie, Isabella, and Oskar against the backdrop of in Italy during World War II. What I enjoyed the most is that their personalities are distinct, they do not feel generic at all. Isabella is a strong individual, she puts herself in so much danger to help others as well as project art. I went to art school for a few years and for me personally art is culture. It is a way to show how a group or individual feels, but also shows what they see around them. Art is very important. Freddie is a pilot during the war. His does gruesome work and is faced with danger often. During this time he bonds very well with his crew mates and you experience his point of view of the bombing, which I found interesting to read. Oskar, whose story is not really described in the description so I wont say much, but he is also a very distinct character who has a very important non-passive role in this book. I felt that this novel described a lot of the various roles citizens could have taken during the war.
I could easily go on about this, I honestly REALLY enjoyed this. It has all of the elements of a historical fiction that I look for. It takes place during an active time in history, the characters are involved in the events in different ways, and I genuinely connected with these characters. For me a bonus of this book was that it took place outside of Germany, France, and Britain. For me personally I had not read a WWII historical fiction that took place in Italy so it caught my eye even more than a historical fiction normally would. Over all I would say if you enjoy historical fiction, art, WWII related books, and you enjoy reading about characters that feel like real people you need to pick this up. I give this book an easy 5 stars!
I could easily go on about this, I honestly REALLY enjoyed this. It has all of the elements of a historical fiction that I look for. It takes place during an active time in history, the characters are involved in the events in different ways, and I genuinely connected with these characters. For me a bonus of this book was that it took place outside of Germany, France, and Britain. For me personally I had not read a WWII historical fiction that took place in Italy so it caught my eye even more than a historical fiction normally would. Over all I would say if you enjoy historical fiction, art, WWII related books, and you enjoy reading about characters that feel like real people you need to pick this up. I give this book an easy 5 stars!
March 23, 2017
A very good first effort by the author. There are some gaps and if you purchase this book expecting a lot about art, forgeries to fool Nazi's etc. you will be greatly disappointed since art is about 1% of this book.
That being said, this book made me feel lousy about my Italian heritage. I know, I know. I have been there numerous times, and Florence is one of my favorite cities, but this book really brings the action of the Fascists to the fore and shows what a bunch of brutes they were. The first two sections of the book were very hard to follow as each character is set forth in very short and quick chapters which is nice for moving the book along but which makes it hard to follow and form some impressions or get close to the characters. Making it worse, a bomber squad from England is followed and then we lose track of them by the 3rd portion of the book. I know that they are not the most vital to the story, but they are actually the most fully developed characters in the book and to lose them left a hole in the story.
You are going to be thrown this way and that by this book. You will see the horrors of the Nazi's and the Italian Fascists, and you will see how life was disrupted and ruined for most everyone in Italy during the War. The last section which is 40 chapters long finally gets everyone and everything moving and by the end you truly feel pain for certain characters and you feel absolute hatred for a few others.
Go to Italy today and you will see beautiful vistas, gorgeous scenery and artwork, taste amazing food and wine, but remember that if you dig a little deeper you will find some very ugly scenes and people who dominated, decimated and destroyed this lovely country and its people. It is a vissage that we do not want to see, but it is something that we all need to realize and recognize and make sure that it never happens again. Many thanks to the author for this great look at the horrors faced during WW2.
And if you are a movie buff, take a gander at Roberto Rossellini's classic WW2 movies, many of which were filmed at the very end of the fighting there: Rome, Open City; Paisan; and Germany, Year Zero. Outstanding work!!
That being said, this book made me feel lousy about my Italian heritage. I know, I know. I have been there numerous times, and Florence is one of my favorite cities, but this book really brings the action of the Fascists to the fore and shows what a bunch of brutes they were. The first two sections of the book were very hard to follow as each character is set forth in very short and quick chapters which is nice for moving the book along but which makes it hard to follow and form some impressions or get close to the characters. Making it worse, a bomber squad from England is followed and then we lose track of them by the 3rd portion of the book. I know that they are not the most vital to the story, but they are actually the most fully developed characters in the book and to lose them left a hole in the story.
You are going to be thrown this way and that by this book. You will see the horrors of the Nazi's and the Italian Fascists, and you will see how life was disrupted and ruined for most everyone in Italy during the War. The last section which is 40 chapters long finally gets everyone and everything moving and by the end you truly feel pain for certain characters and you feel absolute hatred for a few others.
Go to Italy today and you will see beautiful vistas, gorgeous scenery and artwork, taste amazing food and wine, but remember that if you dig a little deeper you will find some very ugly scenes and people who dominated, decimated and destroyed this lovely country and its people. It is a vissage that we do not want to see, but it is something that we all need to realize and recognize and make sure that it never happens again. Many thanks to the author for this great look at the horrors faced during WW2.
And if you are a movie buff, take a gander at Roberto Rossellini's classic WW2 movies, many of which were filmed at the very end of the fighting there: Rome, Open City; Paisan; and Germany, Year Zero. Outstanding work!!
June 21, 2015
Florence, 1943. Isabella is painting in her riverside studio when the bombers arrive. “She lays down a brushstroke, smudges it delicately with her finger. There is paint beneath her nails, ingrained in the lines on her palms. Her smock is a grubby rainbow of fused colours. She wipes her brushes on the blue fabric. Everything in the studio is peppered with pigment, smeared with oil paint, sticky with resins. The coins and banknotes in her purse often have alizarin crimson or raw umber fingerprints on them. Her ration coupons are crisp with sun-thickened oil stains or blackened with charcoal dust.”
Freddie, her husband, who she has not heard from for three years, is the pilot of one of the planes Isabella can hear.
“The sight of Florence below, the cluster of churches and towers and palaces tiered up on either side of the river, as familiar as his own hand, as surreal as any nightmare. The setting of many of the most intimate and heartening moments of his life. Taunting him now with a spell of inaccessibility. He throttles back the four engines. Brings V Victor down. Since the advent of war many things have happened to him that he could not possibly have imagined. He wonders if this is one of the subliminal reasons men wage war. To increase the daily frequency of surprise and shock. The forerunners of revelation.”
Oskar, a German Jew and friend of Freddie and Isabella from their days at art school together before the war, manages to escape with his young daughter from the Paris round-up of Jews. He arrives in Italy, intending to return to Florence.
“The town has been built into the rock and is a maze of sloping arched alleys forking off at surprising angles, spiralling up to the church or down to the sea. No street is much wider than a corridor: people in opposite homes might almost lean out of their windows and join hands. The houses tumble crookedly, playfully into each other like drunken friends.”
The man in the middle of the photo below is Mario Carita, the novel's most fearsome character. He was head of the Italian SS in Florence.
The destruction done by the Nazis in 1944
And the road in Florence where Isabella and Freddie live.
I really enjoyed this novel. Recommended.
January 27, 2018
The WW2 experiences of three friends who meet at an art school in Florence prior to the war. Freddie joins Bomber Command; his wife Isabella remains in Italy; Oskar, a German Jew, narrowly escapes the Gestapo in Paris and makes his way to Italy with his young daughter. It’s a well written and engaging novel mostly set in a convincingly evoked Italy during world war two. Structurally it’s similar to All the Light We Cannot See – lots of short chapters with alternating characters – a format that works well and maintains for the most part a high tension line. Perhaps fifty or so pages could have been cut. The home straight though is compelling stuff and the ending brings tears to the eyes. 4.5 stars.
August 20, 2017
This was an impassioned story of love and brutality, told from multiple points of view over a span of several years, before and during WW II.
Isabella and Freddie had barely begun their life together when war separated them.
What most struck a chord with me was the character Oskar, and his love for his daughter Esme. How do you teach a child so young that the "bad people" want to hurt you just because you are Jewish? To hide who you are for your own safety but to not give up hope. There was so much ugliness, and desperation but Esme never gave up hope because of Oskar.
This was a thought provoking tale of the cruelty of war and I can't count the number of times my heart was in my throat and tears were in my eyes.
I received a complimentary copy for review.
Isabella and Freddie had barely begun their life together when war separated them.
What most struck a chord with me was the character Oskar, and his love for his daughter Esme. How do you teach a child so young that the "bad people" want to hurt you just because you are Jewish? To hide who you are for your own safety but to not give up hope. There was so much ugliness, and desperation but Esme never gave up hope because of Oskar.
This was a thought provoking tale of the cruelty of war and I can't count the number of times my heart was in my throat and tears were in my eyes.
I received a complimentary copy for review.
Read
July 26, 2016Here is a novel of stature, and a living portrait of a city. By means of fresh and arresting writing that engages all of the senses, it immerses the reader totally in another time and place. Beautiful Florence, ravaged by the second world war. Its ancient bridges, mined by the Wehrmacht and patrolled by Fascist militia, await their bombardment by The Allies. Jews are on the run, informers are rife, secret police and torturers lurk, and voluble Italians no longer finish their sentences, but live their daily lives vicariously exiled from themselves.
September 1943. The novel opens with Isabella (Italian), a painter at work in the intimacy of her studio. The air raid siren shrieks, and then the sky outside her window fills with the familiar drone of warplanes. In one of the planes -- V Victor, a Lancaster bomber -- sits English pilot Freddie Hartman. The bomb doors open above the neighbourhood of Florence where his home is, and where his wife still has her studio. Looking down, he can identify it, close by the English cemetery and Maestro’s atelier, where he and Isabella met as students in 1937. They have been separated since Italy declared war on Britain and France.
The extreme tension of this opening lays bare to the reader not only that they are in for a nail-biting ride, but the pervading atmosphere and underlying themes of the narrative. Intimacy and the many ways it is eroded by war. Separation and displacement. There is humour too, among the lads at the RAF base in Lincolnshire, from where Freddie and his crew set off on bomb runs, trusting in their luck. And some awe-inspiring descriptions of the night sky in these chapters put me right there in the cockpit.
Friend Oskar, a German jew and fellow student at Maestro’s atelier, turned to dance as a profession and moved to Paris with his French wife. At the 1942 round up, he escaped with his six-year-old daughter Esme, but not his wife. Oskar, fleeing south with Esme, touchingly prepares the child for life with him as a fugitive. But by the time they cross into Italy, deportations are leaving from Genoa and Florence. Marina, Isabella’s neighbour, was once engaged to Francesco, but his Jewish mother is also a fascist, and objected to the match.
These five fascinating characters populate the narrative and also structure it contrapuntally through their alternating points of view. To craft a novel from five distinct perspectives requires ambition and immense skill. And the result is a feat of architecture worthy of beautiful Florence and deserving our highest praise.
September 1943. The novel opens with Isabella (Italian), a painter at work in the intimacy of her studio. The air raid siren shrieks, and then the sky outside her window fills with the familiar drone of warplanes. In one of the planes -- V Victor, a Lancaster bomber -- sits English pilot Freddie Hartman. The bomb doors open above the neighbourhood of Florence where his home is, and where his wife still has her studio. Looking down, he can identify it, close by the English cemetery and Maestro’s atelier, where he and Isabella met as students in 1937. They have been separated since Italy declared war on Britain and France.
The extreme tension of this opening lays bare to the reader not only that they are in for a nail-biting ride, but the pervading atmosphere and underlying themes of the narrative. Intimacy and the many ways it is eroded by war. Separation and displacement. There is humour too, among the lads at the RAF base in Lincolnshire, from where Freddie and his crew set off on bomb runs, trusting in their luck. And some awe-inspiring descriptions of the night sky in these chapters put me right there in the cockpit.
Friend Oskar, a German jew and fellow student at Maestro’s atelier, turned to dance as a profession and moved to Paris with his French wife. At the 1942 round up, he escaped with his six-year-old daughter Esme, but not his wife. Oskar, fleeing south with Esme, touchingly prepares the child for life with him as a fugitive. But by the time they cross into Italy, deportations are leaving from Genoa and Florence. Marina, Isabella’s neighbour, was once engaged to Francesco, but his Jewish mother is also a fascist, and objected to the match.
These five fascinating characters populate the narrative and also structure it contrapuntally through their alternating points of view. To craft a novel from five distinct perspectives requires ambition and immense skill. And the result is a feat of architecture worthy of beautiful Florence and deserving our highest praise.
March 7, 2016
First, let’s say this - it’s a great story about five young people, beginning in Florence before WW2 when three of them were in art school, and ending there in 1946. Freddie returns to England and becomes an RAF bomber pilot, his wife Isabella and friend Marina remain in Florence where their lives are a series of compromises to allow them to survive Nazi occupation, while Francesco and Oskar with his 6-year-old daughter Esme, are Jewish and spend much of the time hiding or on the run. The thread of tension alone running through TWBTF could have made this a 4-5 star novel.
Appropriately for a story centred on painters and painting, it’s written in a very painterly style. Phrases used like colour laid down by the palette knife. An undertone of foreboding. Sentence fragments building description, layer upon layer, adding depth. Each short chapter a miniature depicting a scene with a masterful economy of words.
In the opening chapters this is brilliantly effective, but here’s the problem: imagine viewing over 100 miniatures in exactly the same style - a studio in Florence; a love affair; a misty Tuscan morning; the camaraderie of an RAF aircrew; a concentration camp – and you begin to realize the limitations of this sort of writing. There needs to be some variation or it becomes tiresome and monotonous.
And there is another – with every scene having layer upon layer of detail, it’s long, far too long, despite the story itself being so arresting. There is so much repetition – I lost track of the missions Freddie flew; yes, each one was finely drawn but what distinguished one bombing raid from another? And confusion, with so many characters who never appear in more than one or two scenes ... who was that blind boy in the forest? The same one living with the partisans?
This is a book that should have been about half its length. I don’t even know how many pages, because each one of the more than 100 chapters started with page 1. That’s what, 500-600? (try navigating that on an e-book!)
That made me wonder whether TWBTF was self-published – the publishing house produces art prints with no mention of the novel – and that might also explain the large number of errors. Some are minor – “Butcher” Harris for Bomber; “refractory” for “refectory”; a rice ration of two grams (half a teaspoon!). Some are annoying: artists’ oil described as “sun-thickened” every time it’s mentioned; Esme’s ever-present toy bear* used as a symbol for a child’s indomitable spirit; a courier given an instruction to knock in code – two longs, one short - on the very same page, he knocks two short, one long. And some are more troubling – Freddie says, after Italy declares war in 1940, that he needs to return to England. How did he do that? France was already occupied and he would probably have been interned as an enemy alien anyway.
There are more, and I wish they had not intruded on my reading as much as they did. TWBTF was Haybittle’s first novel and it really cried out for a loving but ruthless editor to make it first-rate.
----
Appropriately for a story centred on painters and painting, it’s written in a very painterly style. Phrases used like colour laid down by the palette knife. An undertone of foreboding. Sentence fragments building description, layer upon layer, adding depth. Each short chapter a miniature depicting a scene with a masterful economy of words.
In the opening chapters this is brilliantly effective, but here’s the problem: imagine viewing over 100 miniatures in exactly the same style - a studio in Florence; a love affair; a misty Tuscan morning; the camaraderie of an RAF aircrew; a concentration camp – and you begin to realize the limitations of this sort of writing. There needs to be some variation or it becomes tiresome and monotonous.
And there is another – with every scene having layer upon layer of detail, it’s long, far too long, despite the story itself being so arresting. There is so much repetition – I lost track of the missions Freddie flew; yes, each one was finely drawn but what distinguished one bombing raid from another? And confusion, with so many characters who never appear in more than one or two scenes ... who was that blind boy in the forest? The same one living with the partisans?
This is a book that should have been about half its length. I don’t even know how many pages, because each one of the more than 100 chapters started with page 1. That’s what, 500-600? (try navigating that on an e-book!)
That made me wonder whether TWBTF was self-published – the publishing house produces art prints with no mention of the novel – and that might also explain the large number of errors. Some are minor – “Butcher” Harris for Bomber; “refractory” for “refectory”; a rice ration of two grams (half a teaspoon!). Some are annoying: artists’ oil described as “sun-thickened” every time it’s mentioned; Esme’s ever-present toy bear* used as a symbol for a child’s indomitable spirit; a courier given an instruction to knock in code – two longs, one short - on the very same page, he knocks two short, one long. And some are more troubling – Freddie says, after Italy declares war in 1940, that he needs to return to England. How did he do that? France was already occupied and he would probably have been interned as an enemy alien anyway.
There are more, and I wish they had not intruded on my reading as much as they did. TWBTF was Haybittle’s first novel and it really cried out for a loving but ruthless editor to make it first-rate.
----
* I can’t think of this bear without being reminded of the British satire Drop the Dead Donkey where the correspondent Damien plants a stuffed animal in every war scene so he can end each report, intoning: “... this child’s battered soft toy a mute witness to the devastation in this war-ravaged country."
February 20, 2016
"That there's a deep compulsion in the human spirit to overcome the selfish antics of the I in us. War grindingly, shifts one's perspective from I to we. Never again will many of us feel our lives so interpedently entwined as we do in these times of war. Never again will someone else's loss or gain become such an integral part of our own store of resources."
It is passages such as that which made me loveThe Way Back to Florence by Glenn Haybittle. It was a great coincidence that I found this wonderfully exciting book, just as my book group presented a challenge of reading a book about World War II. This is an era that I love to read about and Haybittle did an extraordinary job of presenting the dilemmas of the time to the reader. His characters were layered and interesting and he brought to life the struggles of the population of Florence during that challenging time. Also of great interest is his depiction of the camaraderie that existed among the members of a bombing team of the RAF.
The three key characters of the story are Isabella, Freddie, her husband and Oscar who were classmates of an art studio, apprenticing under the Maestro. Once the war starts Freddie is forced to return to his native England while Isabella remains in Florence. Freddie becomes a bomber pilot. Oscar, a Jewish man moves to France and what he hopes is safety.
The book moves between characters as the reader learns their struggles and compromises to survive the war. I love a book which contains shifting perspectives and there are many in The Way Back to Florence. Here is an excerpt about Isabella as she continues painting:
"Today is a good day. Today she feels she is the master of her craft. Today she is free of the grinding tyranny of doubt that mocks her ambition. The voice that bites and slanders and causes her more heartache than any other voice. Today she is focused, she is exultant . Her every brushstroke like a wake of radiance."
Because much of the book is centered around an artist perspective, Haybittle makes liberal use of colors hues and vivid scenic descriptions in his prose. Here are a few examples:
His eye is drawn to the grotesque stone carvings ornamenting many of the old palaces - nightmare images underworld threshold guardians, here a Cyclops, there a serpent with bat's wings. Had they even existed yesterday?"
"By the old city wall, Isabella startles a cat that is nudging a maimed lizard with its paws. Dashes of red, like pigment, offset the luminous green scales . She knows a moment of shame for finding the contrast of colour beautiful."
I love historical fiction and am aware that authors frequently adjust history to more perfectly fit the plot of their books. There are a few instances of this in The Way Back to Florence as the author notes in a foreword:
"For purposes of heightening drama, I've taken one or two mischievous liberties with historical fact in this novel, most notably my RAF raid on Florence in 1943. This never happened. It was the USAAF who carried out this particular raid."
I really loved this book and would not hesitate to recommend it.
It is passages such as that which made me loveThe Way Back to Florence by Glenn Haybittle. It was a great coincidence that I found this wonderfully exciting book, just as my book group presented a challenge of reading a book about World War II. This is an era that I love to read about and Haybittle did an extraordinary job of presenting the dilemmas of the time to the reader. His characters were layered and interesting and he brought to life the struggles of the population of Florence during that challenging time. Also of great interest is his depiction of the camaraderie that existed among the members of a bombing team of the RAF.
The three key characters of the story are Isabella, Freddie, her husband and Oscar who were classmates of an art studio, apprenticing under the Maestro. Once the war starts Freddie is forced to return to his native England while Isabella remains in Florence. Freddie becomes a bomber pilot. Oscar, a Jewish man moves to France and what he hopes is safety.
The book moves between characters as the reader learns their struggles and compromises to survive the war. I love a book which contains shifting perspectives and there are many in The Way Back to Florence. Here is an excerpt about Isabella as she continues painting:
"Today is a good day. Today she feels she is the master of her craft. Today she is free of the grinding tyranny of doubt that mocks her ambition. The voice that bites and slanders and causes her more heartache than any other voice. Today she is focused, she is exultant . Her every brushstroke like a wake of radiance."
Because much of the book is centered around an artist perspective, Haybittle makes liberal use of colors hues and vivid scenic descriptions in his prose. Here are a few examples:
His eye is drawn to the grotesque stone carvings ornamenting many of the old palaces - nightmare images underworld threshold guardians, here a Cyclops, there a serpent with bat's wings. Had they even existed yesterday?"
"By the old city wall, Isabella startles a cat that is nudging a maimed lizard with its paws. Dashes of red, like pigment, offset the luminous green scales . She knows a moment of shame for finding the contrast of colour beautiful."
I love historical fiction and am aware that authors frequently adjust history to more perfectly fit the plot of their books. There are a few instances of this in The Way Back to Florence as the author notes in a foreword:
"For purposes of heightening drama, I've taken one or two mischievous liberties with historical fact in this novel, most notably my RAF raid on Florence in 1943. This never happened. It was the USAAF who carried out this particular raid."
I really loved this book and would not hesitate to recommend it.
October 22, 2018
Was Even WW2 This Long?
For me to read a book almost all the way through (78% on my Kindle) but then give up must say something, but I am still working out what. I was quite involved in the beginning, certainly. The time is the late 1930s. Isabella is a promising young Italian painter, studying in the Florence studio of an artist referred to only as Maestro. Being an art historian by training, I appreciated the atmosphere, and the technical details were mostly convincing. She falls in love with and marries an English student in the same studio named Freddie. But he is less talented and had already moved into the gallery business by the time WW2 breaks out, forcing him to return to England, away from his Italian wife.
Freddie becomes a bomber pilot with the RAF. Haybittle's descriptions of the bombing runs are so good that I found myself reading for these chapters alone, feeling the ones set in Italy as a distinct drop in tension. But gradually it stopped being a matter of chapters alternating between Freddie and Isabella. Haybittle produces other numerous Florentine characters seemingly out of thin air, with only tangential connection to Isabella. The proportion of Italian to English chapters soon increases to 3:1, or even more. Two of these new characters are Jewish; there is also an enigmatic Gestapo officer and several people associated with the Fascist police.
Very soon I was feeling that Haybittle was willfully multiplying characters and incidents solely for the sake of extending the book. And most of these episodes were variants on familiar tropes from other war literature, albeit with an Italian twist. Except perhaps for Freddie, since Haybittle introduces enough questions about him, such as his true sexuality, to make me want to keep reading. But after goodness knows how many Holocaust roundups, resistance operations, secret messages, and narrow escapes, I came to yet another gratuitous torture scene and decided enough was enough.
February 1, 2018
Thank you to Glenn Haybittle, Cheyne Walk, and Netgalley for the free copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.
Haybittle immediately sucks the reader into the love story from the first: a thunderstorm, a couple drunk and splashing in the puddles, but when it comes to the big reveal one of them fails miserably. So Freddie leaves to fly planes for the Allies and Isabella paints like her life depends on it. For the next several years the two have no contact with each other, which leads each into inappropriate situations.
We are also introduced to a highly talented Jewish tap dancer and his family who do their best to exist in occupied Italy. Dear Esme is a precocious youngster, and her father tries to hide the grim details of discrimination from her, but she witnesses more than he'd like. They are close friends with Isabella, so they find comfort in each other's company.
Haybittle has an impressive use of metaphor. For example-" The stench from the drain, like the brown water in which flowers have died, is like the smell of her own apprehension." Yes! I know that smell, and calling it up from memory can immediately know how she's feeling.
To quote the character, the Maestro, "we've all been in the grip of evil. You realize that? Pure unadulterated evil." This story gives plenty of examples of how the citizens of Italy experienced atrocities at the hands of both the SS and the fascists. BUT there is a happy ending!!!
Haybittle immediately sucks the reader into the love story from the first: a thunderstorm, a couple drunk and splashing in the puddles, but when it comes to the big reveal one of them fails miserably. So Freddie leaves to fly planes for the Allies and Isabella paints like her life depends on it. For the next several years the two have no contact with each other, which leads each into inappropriate situations.
We are also introduced to a highly talented Jewish tap dancer and his family who do their best to exist in occupied Italy. Dear Esme is a precocious youngster, and her father tries to hide the grim details of discrimination from her, but she witnesses more than he'd like. They are close friends with Isabella, so they find comfort in each other's company.
Haybittle has an impressive use of metaphor. For example-" The stench from the drain, like the brown water in which flowers have died, is like the smell of her own apprehension." Yes! I know that smell, and calling it up from memory can immediately know how she's feeling.
To quote the character, the Maestro, "we've all been in the grip of evil. You realize that? Pure unadulterated evil." This story gives plenty of examples of how the citizens of Italy experienced atrocities at the hands of both the SS and the fascists. BUT there is a happy ending!!!
July 7, 2017
The Way Back to Florence. Glenn Haybittle.
Utterly gripping, this novel transports you back to war ravaged Europe - in particular the Florence of Mussolini which draws together the threads of the story.
Isabella an Italian artist remains there painting and hoping to see her English husband Freddie again. Freddie studied with Isabella but returned to England when Italy declared war on her. He now pilots one of the Lancaster bombers V Vicky that will disgorge its load on Florence.
At times sensitive and lyrical and others harrowing and brutal we see via a group of well drawn characters all interconnected, their loves, hopes, trials and betrayals portrayed in absorbing detail.
The setting is equally well drawn and we feel for the place as well as the characters. Haybittle gets to the soul of Florence and of the base in England where Freddie and his crew wait for each mission. V Vicky takes on a life of its own. To Freddie and crew she is more than just a machine.
The mood and atmosphere of the various settings is drawn with an extremely fine line enabling the reader to feel not just for but with the characters.
Superbly written, this is the best book I have read for a long time. A modern classic.
Utterly gripping, this novel transports you back to war ravaged Europe - in particular the Florence of Mussolini which draws together the threads of the story.
Isabella an Italian artist remains there painting and hoping to see her English husband Freddie again. Freddie studied with Isabella but returned to England when Italy declared war on her. He now pilots one of the Lancaster bombers V Vicky that will disgorge its load on Florence.
At times sensitive and lyrical and others harrowing and brutal we see via a group of well drawn characters all interconnected, their loves, hopes, trials and betrayals portrayed in absorbing detail.
The setting is equally well drawn and we feel for the place as well as the characters. Haybittle gets to the soul of Florence and of the base in England where Freddie and his crew wait for each mission. V Vicky takes on a life of its own. To Freddie and crew she is more than just a machine.
The mood and atmosphere of the various settings is drawn with an extremely fine line enabling the reader to feel not just for but with the characters.
Superbly written, this is the best book I have read for a long time. A modern classic.
June 12, 2015
*Copy received from publisher in return for an honest review*
This novel opens in September 1943, as allied bombers target Florence:
Isabella is an artist in the Nazi-occupied city; Freddie, her husband and former fellow art student, has returned to England and is now piloting a Lancaster bomber; Oskar, friend of Isabella and Freddie and a German Jew, has got out of Paris with his daughter and is travelling back to Italy; Marina, Isabella’s sometimes model, has been forced to take a job as a servant in the house of a Fascist; and her friend Francesco, also Jewish, has just had to flee his family home. We meet these linked characters as the allied bombs fall on Florence and follow them through the bloody and destructive period of the Nazi withdrawal.
Freddie and Oskar both hope to get back to Florence and yet it's presently a city full of trip wires. A sense of perilousness comes off the page; this novel really brings home the precariousness of living in this time and in this place. People are peering through keyholes. Everyone is watching and being watched. No-one can quite be trusted. As reader we're not quite sure who to trust. The trip wires are everywhere.
With chapters narrated from the perspective of each of the characters, this novel is ambitious in its structure. It's a big cast list and I was impressed by how so many threads could be compellingly woven together. It's some fierce feat of architecture and engineering, but for me it never once creaked. Each character's strand has elements of individuality in its telling. Isabella's chapters are full of painterly observation, heightened colour, plays of light and the workroom smells of sun-thickened oils and glues and turpentine. Freddie's chapters are narrated with a more fragmented voice and a tone of melancholy behind the airbase banter. There's some fantastically vivid writing in these sections (the descriptions of the aerial pyrotechnics are, weirdly, extremely beautiful – like a series of abstract paintings) and also a pulse-quickening sense that Freddie's narrative might terminate at any moment. Though a huge amount of research has obviously been invested in these sections, it doesn't weigh them down at all. On the contrary, there's a real sense of in-the-moment to them and I was plunging through the skies with V Victor. The precariousness of the pilot's life – those stacked odds – comes over powerfully. While Freddie is flying over Florence, Isabella too is precariously occupied below: working on a portrait of a Nazi officer and, under instruction, forging a copy of an old-master painting of Saint Anthony (patron saint of lost things). It is almost three years since she has heard from Freddie. She sends letters, but gets no replies. She doesn't know if he is lost too.
The interweaving narratives enhance one another. Freddie exposes Isabella's vulnerabilities and thus draws out our sympathy. For his sake, I wanted her to make it through; for hers, it mattered that Freddie kept on making it back to base. In part I wanted the arc to conclude with the two of them tidily reunited, but it was more interesting that I wasn't certain that that was going to be - or ought to be - the case.
The city of Florence itself, so immediate in this writing, is also a character here. The strong sense of place brings the narrative up close and makes it matter. We hear and smell Florence, we feel the ground quake and are there in the smoke and the dust. Florence is a place of timeless beauty and suddenly danger; there is reassurance in its old stones and yet there is potential betrayal everywhere. The writing compellingly tumbles all of that together.
The old stones of Florence seem eternal - and yet are suddenly so fragile. Bridges fall. Certainties are tested. And yet some things go on. The image of the city's sentinel cypresses reoccurs and is one that will stick with me. There's such a wonderful immediacy in this description as Isabella recalls walking through the English cemetery with Freddie in 1937:
(If ever you could smell a sentence!) In July 1944, just released from prison, she's drawn back there again. So much is the same; so much is irreversibly changed.
This novel is crammed with gorgeously sharp-focused descriptions and images that I'll remember. It's the strength of the writing, the up-close attention to detail, that drags this wartime city so urgently into the here and now. The author really puts his head under the water (as it were) – and pulls us under with him.
This is a novel about the precariousness and the preciousness of life. It left me with a sense of how, while the bridges might fall, there are fundamental bonds that endure. Oskar's chapters are particularly moving in that regard and provided some of the high points of the book for me – full of father-daughter tenderness and the kindness of strangers; these small acts of gentleness and generosity seeming so important and powerful at this time. Whilst steering clear of sentimentality, hope and positivity radiate from these scenes. That’s the overall feeling that this novel left me with.
This is a big book, an ambitious, grown-up novel and one that properly warrants that sometimes-misapplied word 'epic'. Bold in its scope, impressive in its structure, lovely in its descriptive artistry, I both admired and thoroughly enjoyed it. I enthusiastically recommend this novel to all Italophiles, fans of hist fic and anyone who smiles at a beautiful sentence.
This novel opens in September 1943, as allied bombers target Florence:
'The air raid siren begins shrieking and before long she hears the now familiar low drone of planes in the sky. The grumbling noise gains in intensity. It becomes a sensation in the body, an irritation on the skin, like a feeding insect. The window frames rattle. All the jars of primers and pigments and sun-thickened oils on the tables and shelves jingle. Circles shiver on the surface of the balsam in the pot on her palette. She goes to the window. Lifts the black drape that keeps out the reflected glare of sunlight. She tilts up her head as if to receive the gentle splash of rain on her face. Never have the planes been this low in the sky before. The metallic insect drone becomes a skip in her heartbeat. The remorseless roar grows more encompassing. Everything she thought of as solid vibrates with its own vulnerability.'
Isabella is an artist in the Nazi-occupied city; Freddie, her husband and former fellow art student, has returned to England and is now piloting a Lancaster bomber; Oskar, friend of Isabella and Freddie and a German Jew, has got out of Paris with his daughter and is travelling back to Italy; Marina, Isabella’s sometimes model, has been forced to take a job as a servant in the house of a Fascist; and her friend Francesco, also Jewish, has just had to flee his family home. We meet these linked characters as the allied bombs fall on Florence and follow them through the bloody and destructive period of the Nazi withdrawal.
Freddie and Oskar both hope to get back to Florence and yet it's presently a city full of trip wires. A sense of perilousness comes off the page; this novel really brings home the precariousness of living in this time and in this place. People are peering through keyholes. Everyone is watching and being watched. No-one can quite be trusted. As reader we're not quite sure who to trust. The trip wires are everywhere.
With chapters narrated from the perspective of each of the characters, this novel is ambitious in its structure. It's a big cast list and I was impressed by how so many threads could be compellingly woven together. It's some fierce feat of architecture and engineering, but for me it never once creaked. Each character's strand has elements of individuality in its telling. Isabella's chapters are full of painterly observation, heightened colour, plays of light and the workroom smells of sun-thickened oils and glues and turpentine. Freddie's chapters are narrated with a more fragmented voice and a tone of melancholy behind the airbase banter. There's some fantastically vivid writing in these sections (the descriptions of the aerial pyrotechnics are, weirdly, extremely beautiful – like a series of abstract paintings) and also a pulse-quickening sense that Freddie's narrative might terminate at any moment. Though a huge amount of research has obviously been invested in these sections, it doesn't weigh them down at all. On the contrary, there's a real sense of in-the-moment to them and I was plunging through the skies with V Victor. The precariousness of the pilot's life – those stacked odds – comes over powerfully. While Freddie is flying over Florence, Isabella too is precariously occupied below: working on a portrait of a Nazi officer and, under instruction, forging a copy of an old-master painting of Saint Anthony (patron saint of lost things). It is almost three years since she has heard from Freddie. She sends letters, but gets no replies. She doesn't know if he is lost too.
'She tries to remember if Freddie began buttoning his shirt from the top or the bottom. She tries to remember him tying his shoelaces. The images she sees of her husband nowadays are washed out and ghostly as if consisting predominantly of reflected light.'
The interweaving narratives enhance one another. Freddie exposes Isabella's vulnerabilities and thus draws out our sympathy. For his sake, I wanted her to make it through; for hers, it mattered that Freddie kept on making it back to base. In part I wanted the arc to conclude with the two of them tidily reunited, but it was more interesting that I wasn't certain that that was going to be - or ought to be - the case.
The city of Florence itself, so immediate in this writing, is also a character here. The strong sense of place brings the narrative up close and makes it matter. We hear and smell Florence, we feel the ground quake and are there in the smoke and the dust. Florence is a place of timeless beauty and suddenly danger; there is reassurance in its old stones and yet there is potential betrayal everywhere. The writing compellingly tumbles all of that together.
'In Piazza d’Azeglio, Isabella kicks through the fallen ankle-deep leaves of the high sycamore trees. Children used to play here before the war. Now the large square is used to grow corn and cabbages. A fascist militia with a light machine gun hanging from his shoulder stands guard over the cabbages. He looks at her with stern defiance, as though daring her to ridicule the role he has been assigned in the war. Corn and cabbages. It is another example of the comic ineptness of the measures taken by the fascists to prepare for war. She remembers in 1940 when the city’s population had been called upon to donate all the metal objects they could spare. Married women were asked for their wedding rings. Florence’s piazzas were thus heaped with enormous piles of tarnished rusting metal objects. She had thought that if her country was in need of this heap of junk to fight a war then it was a war it would surely lose. There was something almost touching about the slapdash poverty of the contribution. Candelabras, door handles, pipes, bits of engines, tools –how much rubbish there was in the world! It later occurred to her that these bits of waste metal would in all probability be melted down and fashioned into weapons, ammunition maybe. That the candelabra she was looking at might end up lodged in someone’s chest in the form of a bullet, someone who would never know that a household ornament of mysterious provenance would cause his death.'
The old stones of Florence seem eternal - and yet are suddenly so fragile. Bridges fall. Certainties are tested. And yet some things go on. The image of the city's sentinel cypresses reoccurs and is one that will stick with me. There's such a wonderful immediacy in this description as Isabella recalls walking through the English cemetery with Freddie in 1937:
'She inhales the peppery warm breath of the cypresses. She loves their scent. It’s a scent that seems to make moments memories even before they've stopped happening.'
(If ever you could smell a sentence!) In July 1944, just released from prison, she's drawn back there again. So much is the same; so much is irreversibly changed.
'She walks away. Feeling the absence of any bag slung over her shoulder. The absence of any keys in her possession. She walks until she is standing opposite the English cemetery. High on its walled island of cypresses. She has the world to herself. There is a sense in the early morning stillness that everything might be begun from scratch. It is another of nature’s deceptions.'
This novel is crammed with gorgeously sharp-focused descriptions and images that I'll remember. It's the strength of the writing, the up-close attention to detail, that drags this wartime city so urgently into the here and now. The author really puts his head under the water (as it were) – and pulls us under with him.
This is a novel about the precariousness and the preciousness of life. It left me with a sense of how, while the bridges might fall, there are fundamental bonds that endure. Oskar's chapters are particularly moving in that regard and provided some of the high points of the book for me – full of father-daughter tenderness and the kindness of strangers; these small acts of gentleness and generosity seeming so important and powerful at this time. Whilst steering clear of sentimentality, hope and positivity radiate from these scenes. That’s the overall feeling that this novel left me with.
This is a big book, an ambitious, grown-up novel and one that properly warrants that sometimes-misapplied word 'epic'. Bold in its scope, impressive in its structure, lovely in its descriptive artistry, I both admired and thoroughly enjoyed it. I enthusiastically recommend this novel to all Italophiles, fans of hist fic and anyone who smiles at a beautiful sentence.
December 3, 2018
The Way Back to Florence is about three friends who met during a painting class in Florence, Italy, before the WWII began. Isabella was the only woman in Maestro's workshop. Before tje war begins, Isabella and the English Freddie, who was also studying painting, get married. One of their friend and important character in this novel is Oskar, a German Jew, who ends up moving to Paris to become a dancer.
Told via alternating points of view chapters, THe Way Back to Florence was The story is told via alternating chapters. We get Isabella's perspective, who's still in Florence where the situation is combustible, with Mussolini's fascists and German Nazis in charge. Her husband, Freddie is flying bombers for the British. They lost contact for years.
I usually enjoy WWII novels and given that this happens in arty Florence, I was excited to read it. Unfortunately, it took me forever to get into this novel. I thought the alternating chapters with different points of view were clunky and jarring. There was too much unnecessary detail, too many characters that pop in and then disappear. There were too many chapters about Freddie flying bombers - they were repetitive and boring at times. I personally could have done with not reading about the detailed torture of one of Isabella's friends. Somehow, Isabella came out unscathed, despite witnessing some of it and being herself subjected to violence.
Even though I became more engaged in the second half of the novel, I'm sad to say I had a hard time developing feelings for any of the characters. I think it had something to do with the extraneous details of bombers and planes, too many minor characters who bogged down the novel, and even the tone didn't quite work for me. Overall, The Way Back to Florence was uneven and overly long.
I'm sorry to be the outlier with this one, I just didn't feel it.
I've received this novel via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.
Told via alternating points of view chapters, THe Way Back to Florence was The story is told via alternating chapters. We get Isabella's perspective, who's still in Florence where the situation is combustible, with Mussolini's fascists and German Nazis in charge. Her husband, Freddie is flying bombers for the British. They lost contact for years.
I usually enjoy WWII novels and given that this happens in arty Florence, I was excited to read it. Unfortunately, it took me forever to get into this novel. I thought the alternating chapters with different points of view were clunky and jarring. There was too much unnecessary detail, too many characters that pop in and then disappear. There were too many chapters about Freddie flying bombers - they were repetitive and boring at times. I personally could have done with not reading about the detailed torture of one of Isabella's friends. Somehow, Isabella came out unscathed, despite witnessing some of it and being herself subjected to violence.
Even though I became more engaged in the second half of the novel, I'm sad to say I had a hard time developing feelings for any of the characters. I think it had something to do with the extraneous details of bombers and planes, too many minor characters who bogged down the novel, and even the tone didn't quite work for me. Overall, The Way Back to Florence was uneven and overly long.
I'm sorry to be the outlier with this one, I just didn't feel it.
I've received this novel via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.
June 1, 2018
The demeaning sacrifices women have to make in Mussolini’s Italy for social advancement are early on highlighted when Isabella, an aspiring young artist, is told the atelier does not admit women. Except Maestro, the teacher, is willing to make an exception for her if she agrees to pose nude for him as Eve. Thus begins the fraught and fateful relationship she will share with Maestro through the war years that sees her constrained to forge a famous old master painting for the SS.
This is a novel about art (and love) in wartime. How war highlights what is worth saving in life – identity, intimacy, free expression, culture, sensibility and human bonds. The Way back to Florence of the title is the way back to a world in which these values still prevail. War though creates an environment in which even art goes underground. In the novel famous sculptures are hidden inside ugly industrial casings and paintings vanish or are forged. Art and identity are seen as mutually dependent as if without art our sense of self is brutalised and impoverished. Florence, says one character, exists to educate our memory and this is the engrossing story, told with a sustained richness of texture, of how Florence first suffers under Fascist barbarism and then fights back to regain its cultural and humanistic identity.
This is a novel about art (and love) in wartime. How war highlights what is worth saving in life – identity, intimacy, free expression, culture, sensibility and human bonds. The Way back to Florence of the title is the way back to a world in which these values still prevail. War though creates an environment in which even art goes underground. In the novel famous sculptures are hidden inside ugly industrial casings and paintings vanish or are forged. Art and identity are seen as mutually dependent as if without art our sense of self is brutalised and impoverished. Florence, says one character, exists to educate our memory and this is the engrossing story, told with a sustained richness of texture, of how Florence first suffers under Fascist barbarism and then fights back to regain its cultural and humanistic identity.
July 14, 2016
I couldn’t put this down. The author did a fabulous job of making me care for the wellbeing of his characters, whether it was Freddie, the pilot of a Lancaster Bomber, his new wife Isabella, a painter in Florence who becomes involved with both the resistance and the SS, or their friend Oskar, a German Jew and a dancer (he studied under the man who taught Pina Bausch) and his little girl, Esme. I especially loved the Bomber Command sections – the operations over Germany were so vividly described that for the first time I had an idea of what those men went through. The brilliant descriptive writing throughout this novel and the likeability of its main characters gives it oodles of vitality and momentum. It’s exciting and heartlifting as well as sad. And brilliantly researched.
December 16, 2016
For months I had been unable to finish reading anything, until I opened this first novel by Glenn Haybittle. Here is the novel that will keep you reading through the night.
A novel of stature, and a living portrait of a city. By means of fresh and arresting writing that engages all of the senses, it immerses the reader totally in another time and place. Beautiful Florence, ravaged by the second world war. Its ancient bridges, mined by the Wehrmacht and patrolled by Fascist militia, await their bombardment by The Allies. Jews are on the run, informers are rife, secret police and torturers lurk, and voluble Italians no longer finish their sentences, but live their daily lives vicariously exiled from themselves.
September 1943. The novel opens with Isabella (Italian), a painter at work in the intimacy of her studio. The air raid siren shrieks, and then the sky outside her window fills with the familiar drone of warplanes. In one of the planes -- V Victor, a Lancaster bomber -- sits English pilot Freddie Hartman. The bomb doors open above the neighbourhood of Florence where his home is, and where his wife still has her studio. Looking down, he can identify it, close by the English cemetery and Maestro’s atelier, where he and Isabella met as students in 1937. They have been separated since Italy declared war on Britain and France.
The extreme tension of this opening lays bare to the reader not only that they are in for a nail-biting ride, but the pervading atmosphere and underlying themes of the narrative. Intimacy and the many ways it is eroded by war. Separation and displacement. There is humour too, among the lads at the RAF base in Lincolnshire, from where Freddie and his crew set off on bomb runs, trusting in their luck. And some awe-inspiring descriptions of the night sky in these chapters put me right there in the cockpit.
See my full review here http://www.bookmuse.co.uk
A novel of stature, and a living portrait of a city. By means of fresh and arresting writing that engages all of the senses, it immerses the reader totally in another time and place. Beautiful Florence, ravaged by the second world war. Its ancient bridges, mined by the Wehrmacht and patrolled by Fascist militia, await their bombardment by The Allies. Jews are on the run, informers are rife, secret police and torturers lurk, and voluble Italians no longer finish their sentences, but live their daily lives vicariously exiled from themselves.
September 1943. The novel opens with Isabella (Italian), a painter at work in the intimacy of her studio. The air raid siren shrieks, and then the sky outside her window fills with the familiar drone of warplanes. In one of the planes -- V Victor, a Lancaster bomber -- sits English pilot Freddie Hartman. The bomb doors open above the neighbourhood of Florence where his home is, and where his wife still has her studio. Looking down, he can identify it, close by the English cemetery and Maestro’s atelier, where he and Isabella met as students in 1937. They have been separated since Italy declared war on Britain and France.
The extreme tension of this opening lays bare to the reader not only that they are in for a nail-biting ride, but the pervading atmosphere and underlying themes of the narrative. Intimacy and the many ways it is eroded by war. Separation and displacement. There is humour too, among the lads at the RAF base in Lincolnshire, from where Freddie and his crew set off on bomb runs, trusting in their luck. And some awe-inspiring descriptions of the night sky in these chapters put me right there in the cockpit.
See my full review here http://www.bookmuse.co.uk
March 25, 2018
The Way Back to Florence is a tale of love during war between an Italian woman and English man, and between a father and his young daughter. Isabella and Freddie are separated by the Second World War, Isabella staying in Florence, while Freddie returns to England to pilot a bomber. Their friend, Oskar, a dancer and German Jew, and his daughter, Esme, escape the Paris round ups and head south to Italy. While Freddie experiences the horrors of flying through flak and evading fighters, Isabella is entangled in a dangerous web involving the local resistance, local fascists, and a German SS officer. Oskar and Esme try to eke out an existence, but eventually are caught and sent to a camp. The characterisation is excellent, both in relation to the three lead characters, but also the supporting cast, with Haybittle creating a deep sense of affinity for Isabella, Freddie and Oskar and their plights. The tale is told as a multi-layered narrative, involving a number of entwined threads, and doesn’t pull any punches with respect to the harrowing experiences of the lead characters – being betrayed, flying over German cities at night, brutal interrogations, surviving concentration camps, being caught in the role of collaborator. Indeed, the tale is loaded with a deep sense of realism, tension and affect, so that just as the characters cycle through a gamut of emotions, so does the reader. And while the story is complex and involves a number of twists and turns, there is no sense of awkward plot devices. The result is a visceral, engaging, thoughtful and at times traumatic story of love, loyalties, compromises, and survival.
September 12, 2017
This is a wonderful piece of historical fiction based in the time of World War II. It's the tale of three individuals from very different backgrounds and circumstances who meet and become friends in art school in Florence. When the war starts, they each have to go their separate ways but they all fight to make their way back to Florence and each other again.
This book has all the best qualities of a great novel. The plot sweeps you off your feet, the characters are well-developed and you easily connect with them. There is suspense and a little romance and it's all so good.
*I received an advance reading copy from the publisher in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.*
This book has all the best qualities of a great novel. The plot sweeps you off your feet, the characters are well-developed and you easily connect with them. There is suspense and a little romance and it's all so good.
*I received an advance reading copy from the publisher in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.*
October 8, 2017
Laying down my kindle after finishing the last pages of The Way Back to Florence, I am astonished that I am still sitting on the couch in my living room and not in a war torn Florence celebrating the end of the war. So realistic are the words penned down by Haybittle that you will be spending the duration of the novel shoulder to shoulder with the characters witnessing the suffering, destruction and adrenalin rush first hand. It is hard for me to grasp the fact that this is the debut novel of Haybittle as his writing, characters and plot indicate a prowess that is hard for even the seasoned writers to master. The Way Back to Florence has definitely put the name of Haybittle in the list of young writers to look out for and I am positive he will be gracing the literary scene with more masterpieces.
Occurring during the time of World War 2 and its preceding period, The Way back to Florence narrates the story of Isabella, an Italian, her husband Freddie, an Englishman, and Oskar, a German Jew, who learnt in the same art school under the dictatorial Maestro and his fascist assistant Fosco Scarafuggi. With the onset of the war, Freddie moves back to England to become a fighter pilot performing routine air raids over the German occupied areas. Oskar, a dancer, escapes the roundup of the Jews in Paris and arrives in Italy with his young daughter Esme seeking shelter. Isabella remains in Italy concentrating on her painting until one day Maestro asks her to forge a masterpiece to fool the Nazis who are looting precious art pieces out of Italy. Will Isabella be caught forging the art pieces? Will Oskar and his daughter be transported to concentration camp? Will Freddie reunite with Isabella? Read to find out more…
My thoughts about this book will definitely be slightly biased as any literature about WWII is always high up in the list of my personal favorites. However, as I am stickler for language and characters, it will take more than the setting to sate my thirst. The Way Back to Florence chronicles the life of the central characters during the war time. The story progresses through various events which add momentum to the narrative and also provide plot twists. There is nothing out of the ordinary in the plot but what sets the novel apart is the way it is presented. Unlike books which idolizes heroics, this is the story of normal people who find themselves inevitably drawn into the quagmire of war fought by strangers. They all are unwilling accomplices forced to perform various acts which they condone not due to their political beliefs but due to their circumstances, religion and nationality. This is what makes the characters realistic as all of them are filled with self-doubt, skepticism and fear yet put up a brave front when faced with issues threatening their survival. One of the characters who stood out for me was Oskar and his struggle to protect his little girl Esme from the horrors of the war. Another interesting portrayal was that of Fosco Scarfuggi, a fascist, who uses the war to immortalize himself and also to settle personal vendettas.
Apart from the characters, Haybittle’s description of the landscape and attention to even the minutest detail in the story is remarkable. He brought alive the city of Florence and its suburbs, the magnificent paintings and the towering architecture right in front of our eyes. Also notable is the author’s description of the bombing routine of the Lancasters piloted by Freddie and others. Each tedious routine is transformed into something unique by Haybittle by sprinkling small dosages of humor, adventure, beauty and sometimes panic into it. The language is also extremely good and provides great source of enjoyment.
Overall, a tragic tale of love, loss and estrangement filled with memorable characters. A must-read for lovers of quality literature with excellent writing, plot and characters,
Occurring during the time of World War 2 and its preceding period, The Way back to Florence narrates the story of Isabella, an Italian, her husband Freddie, an Englishman, and Oskar, a German Jew, who learnt in the same art school under the dictatorial Maestro and his fascist assistant Fosco Scarafuggi. With the onset of the war, Freddie moves back to England to become a fighter pilot performing routine air raids over the German occupied areas. Oskar, a dancer, escapes the roundup of the Jews in Paris and arrives in Italy with his young daughter Esme seeking shelter. Isabella remains in Italy concentrating on her painting until one day Maestro asks her to forge a masterpiece to fool the Nazis who are looting precious art pieces out of Italy. Will Isabella be caught forging the art pieces? Will Oskar and his daughter be transported to concentration camp? Will Freddie reunite with Isabella? Read to find out more…
My thoughts about this book will definitely be slightly biased as any literature about WWII is always high up in the list of my personal favorites. However, as I am stickler for language and characters, it will take more than the setting to sate my thirst. The Way Back to Florence chronicles the life of the central characters during the war time. The story progresses through various events which add momentum to the narrative and also provide plot twists. There is nothing out of the ordinary in the plot but what sets the novel apart is the way it is presented. Unlike books which idolizes heroics, this is the story of normal people who find themselves inevitably drawn into the quagmire of war fought by strangers. They all are unwilling accomplices forced to perform various acts which they condone not due to their political beliefs but due to their circumstances, religion and nationality. This is what makes the characters realistic as all of them are filled with self-doubt, skepticism and fear yet put up a brave front when faced with issues threatening their survival. One of the characters who stood out for me was Oskar and his struggle to protect his little girl Esme from the horrors of the war. Another interesting portrayal was that of Fosco Scarfuggi, a fascist, who uses the war to immortalize himself and also to settle personal vendettas.
Apart from the characters, Haybittle’s description of the landscape and attention to even the minutest detail in the story is remarkable. He brought alive the city of Florence and its suburbs, the magnificent paintings and the towering architecture right in front of our eyes. Also notable is the author’s description of the bombing routine of the Lancasters piloted by Freddie and others. Each tedious routine is transformed into something unique by Haybittle by sprinkling small dosages of humor, adventure, beauty and sometimes panic into it. The language is also extremely good and provides great source of enjoyment.
Overall, a tragic tale of love, loss and estrangement filled with memorable characters. A must-read for lovers of quality literature with excellent writing, plot and characters,
September 14, 2017
The historical fiction market has been awash with WW2 stories over the past few years, and I have read my share of them. But, this book stands apart from the others in my mind. It retains all of the elements integral to novels of that period: nasty nazis; the horror of the holocaust; and the personal pain that ensues from war.
The beauty of this book for me was the loyalty of friends amid the struggle, and the instinct of survival even during the most harrowing and horrific circumstances. There were more "evil-doers" than good guys in Haybittle's world, but his good characters were so beautifully conceived that the reader truly inhabited their world.
I was tense throughout the entire book because there were very few periods of tranquility for the characters. A lot of time was spent in a British fighter plane---narrowly escaping the enemy bombs. This novel certainly doesn't glamorize war, but it elevates the bonds of friendship that military men form during their service. Haybittle's descriptions of the superstitions and rituals of the RAF pilots were interesting and humanizing and helped me understand the mind-set of men who approach death on a daily basis.
And, lest we forget the horror of the Nazi reign, this book takes the reader in to the concentration camps. It is painful reading, but a welcome reminder of where intolerance and prejudice can take us.
THE WAY BACK TO FLORENCE was both beautiful and painful to read. I could not take a constant diet of this subject matter, but it was a book that I am grateful to have experienced. NetGalley provided me with a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
The beauty of this book for me was the loyalty of friends amid the struggle, and the instinct of survival even during the most harrowing and horrific circumstances. There were more "evil-doers" than good guys in Haybittle's world, but his good characters were so beautifully conceived that the reader truly inhabited their world.
I was tense throughout the entire book because there were very few periods of tranquility for the characters. A lot of time was spent in a British fighter plane---narrowly escaping the enemy bombs. This novel certainly doesn't glamorize war, but it elevates the bonds of friendship that military men form during their service. Haybittle's descriptions of the superstitions and rituals of the RAF pilots were interesting and humanizing and helped me understand the mind-set of men who approach death on a daily basis.
And, lest we forget the horror of the Nazi reign, this book takes the reader in to the concentration camps. It is painful reading, but a welcome reminder of where intolerance and prejudice can take us.
THE WAY BACK TO FLORENCE was both beautiful and painful to read. I could not take a constant diet of this subject matter, but it was a book that I am grateful to have experienced. NetGalley provided me with a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
September 11, 2017
Thanks to all of you for recommending this amazing book. Why is it that even though we've read hundreds of books about WWII, we can feel the horror and terror of it so freshly in this novel. Personally, I think it's due to the excellent writing skills of the author. This is an intelligent novel with precise descriptive writing. The reader feels as though he or she is a part of the sickening reality and I felt an actual terror that made me put the book down and walk away. The terror was so real and continued building to the very last page. I missed the characters within minutes and wanted their stories to continue. This is a truly satisfying read. (It also left me longing for Florence, my favorite Italian city.)
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