The Italian Lover - Hardcover

Hellenga, Robert

3.37

352 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316117633 ISBN 13: 9780316117630

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2007

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An exhilarating novel of romance, art, and food in Florence, featuring the beloved Margot Harrington, who graced Robert Hellenga's The Sixteen Pleasures. Margot Harrington's memoir about her discovery in Florence of a priceless masterwork of Renaissance erotica - and the misguided love affair it inspired - is now, 25 years later, being made into a movie. Margot, with the help of her lover, Woody, writes a script that she thinks will validate her life. Of course their script is not used, but never mind - happy endings are the best endings for movies, as Margot eventually comes to see. At the former convent in Florence where "The Sixteen Pleasures" - now called "The Italian Lover," - is being filmed, Margot enters into a drama she never imagined, where her ideas of home, love, art, and aging collide with the imperatives of commerce and the unknowability of other cultures and other people.

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About the Author:

Robert Hellenga received his B.A. from the University of Michigan and studied at Queen's University in Belfast and the University of North Carolina before completing a Ph.D. in English Literature at Princeton University. He is a professor at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, and the author of the novels The Sixteen Pleasures, The Fall of a Sparrow, Blues Lessons, and Philosophy Made Simple.

From Publishers Weekly:

Hellenga reprises protagonist Margot Harrington from The Sixteen Pleasures (1995) in his latest, a romantic comedy about the book-to-film adaptation of Margot's memoir. In the fall of 1990, book restorer and longtime American ex-pat Margot is 53, living in her adopted Florence and awaiting the arrival of a film producer who wants to adapt her 1975 memoir for film. At the same time, Margot meets and falls in love with Alan Woody Woodhull, an Illinois-bred guitarist who gigs at the Bebop Club and also teaches literature at the American Academy. Meanwhile, producer Esther Klein desperately wants to make the film The Italian Lover, her first solo production since her husband/production partner left her. The movie crew includes Michael Gardiner, the middling director dying of cancer, and Miranda Clark, the young actress desperate to capture the true Margot. Subplots abound and conflicts brew (Woody rescues an abused dog; Miranda has problems with a nude scene), but the characters never come fully to life. Elegant in its colorful use of Italian phrases, cuisine and sites, Hellenga's complex novel offers a vivid, often sophisticated view of modern Florence, but less so of its residents and visitors. (Sept.)
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