Kate Caterina: A Novel - Softcover

Riviere, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802139736 ISBN 13: 9780802139733

Publisher: Grove Press, 2003

Synopsis

Chosen as Book of the Year in London by both the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, Kate Caterina is a passionate love story and a heartbreaking saga of a family torn apart by war, situated against a canvas of Italy during World War II. Brilliantly linking the atmosphere of war-torn Europe and a palpable love for Italy and its people, Riviere tells the story of Kate Fenn, a great English beauty who marries a young left-wing Italian doctor and moves to Tuscany, where she relishes the countryside splendor and the strong ties her new family has. She changes her name to Kate Caterina to unite her internationally conflicted sides, but soon finds herself isolated inside Nazi-Fascist Europe with a family completely torn apart by politics. Captivating from the first pages to the unforgettable end, Kate Caterina is the story of a family and a nation traumatized, of loyalty and betrayal, and of Caterina's effort to retain an inner freedom in a country at war. "A masterpiece of a tour through Mussolini's Italy." -- Scott Bernard Nelson, The Boston Globe "Kate Caterina belongs in the great tradition of the European novel." -- The Sunday Telegraph "[The] central characterizations ... diverse places of the heart and mind ... is strong enough to make this novel a remarkable achievement." -- The Spectator

About this title

About the Author:

William Riviere was born in 1954 and brought up in Norfolk. After leaving Cambridge, he spent several years in Venice, and later worked in Japan and travelled extensively around the Far East. He is the author of four previous novels; Watercolour Sky (winner of a Betty Trask Award); A Venetian Theory of Heaven and Earth, Eros and Psyche and Borneo Fire. He has is married to a painter, and teaches at the University of Urbino in Italy.

From Publishers Weekly:

A spry English woman marries an Italian doctor on the eve of World War II and tries to come to terms with a dual national identity in this plodding historical novel, the American debut of British writer Riviere. Caterina, as she is called in Italy (she thinks of herself as Kate Caterina), lives with her husband, Gabriele D'Alessandria, in a crumbling Renaissance palace in Arezzo. Surrounded by extended family and occupied in raising her young daughter, she has begun to make a place for herself. Then, three days after Germany attacks Poland, Gabriele, an inveterate Socialist, is taken into custody as a political prisoner. For Gabriele's sake, Caterina must maintain good relations with her sister-in-law and one-time best friend, Esmeralda, who has just married a high-ranking Fascist officer: this involves socializing with the Fascist elite. Meantime, she must also worry about her brother, Giles, who is fighting on the side of the Allies. Closest to her is Gabriele's father, Luigi, a sad but wise old man, weary of partisanship and more at ease with leisurely chronicles of the war's events. Riviere's plot encompasses plenty of fascinating historical material, particularly Italy's internal divisions during the war, but his long-winded exposition, minimal dialogue and flat prose sink the story. Much care is put into the development of Caterina and Luigi's characters, but neither quite transcends stereotype, undermined by Riviere's tendency to tell rather than show. For a novel set in a war-torn country, Riviere's tale is strangely lacking in drama. Agent, Emma Parry, Carlisle & Co.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0802139736
• ISBN 13: 9780802139733
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384