Vladimir Jabotinsky's Story of My Life
Brian J. Horowitz and Leonid Katsis
Book
Vladimir Jabotinsky is well remembered as a militant leader and father of the right-wing Revisionist...
Folklore: Unlocking the Secrets of Our Post-Enlightenment World
Book
In Folklore, Bill Ivey, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, argues that the...
Lonely Planet East Africa
Lonely Planet, Stuart Butler, Anthony Ham and Mary Fitzpatrick
Book
Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher Lonely Planet East Africa is your passport...
Lonely Planet Maldives
Book
Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher Lonely Planet Maldives is your passport to...
No Need for Geniuses: Revolutionary Science in the Age of the Guillotine
Book
Paris at the time of the French Revolution was the world capital of science. Its scholars laid the...
Lonely Planet Montenegro
Lonely Planet, Peter Dragicevich and Vesna Maric
Book
Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher Lonely Planet Montenegro is your passport...
Mounting Frustration: The Art Museum in the Age of Black Power
Book
Prior to 1967 fewer than a dozen museum exhibitions had featured the work of African American...
Art social issues politics
Eamon de Valera: A Will to Power
Book
This title was shortlisted for the 2015 Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards - Nonfiction Book of the...
Fever of Animals
Book
Until very recently, people believed that certain paintings contained a remnant of a magic force....
ClareR (5674 KP) rated Two Women in Rome in Books
Jun 15, 2021
Lottie also finds Nina’s journal in her personal effects, and the more of it she reads, the more she wants to find out about her life.
I loved the details about Rome in both timelines - I’ve visited Rome and loved it. The strong female characters were also a big plus point for me. Lottie is a head archivist, she really knows what she’s doing and is confident in her abilities. Nina is also an assertive woman - she is often in new situations that many would find themselves floundering in (Ok, that sounds really vague, but I don’t want to give anything away!)
This is a book about secrets: about keeping them, and what happens when they are revealed - both good and bad. This isn’t a book that goes fast and hard in its revelations. Quite opposite in fact, and probably why I liked it so much. I love a well told story, and I really felt that I knew the women in this because of that feeling of not being rushed through the story.
There’s a fair amount of Italian politics in this, some of which I had never known about, so that was another plus point. I hadn’t realised that Italy had had quite such a tumultuous political life for so long after World War Two. The novel has a great mix of themes, actually: secrets, history, politics, life in Rome, betrayal, guilt. I think I’m becoming a bit of an Elizabeth Buchan fan because I really enjoyed her last book The Museum of Broken Promises, as well. Both books are set in Europe, with the aftereffects of great political upheavals, ostensibly going back to World War Two. This book is well worth reading - I’d definitely recommend it.
Many thanks to The Pigeonhole and NetGalley for my copy of this book.