4 stars ☆

✎ . . . ❝ why, it would really be being unselfish to go away and be happy for a little, because we would come back so much nicer. ❞ .ೃ࿐

˚₊‧꒰ა genres + tropes ໒꒱ ‧₊˚
-fiction
-historical
-romance

˚₊‧꒰ა plot ໒꒱ ‧₊˚
okay so first of all i read this on a train while visiting italy and then finished on the beach back home so my experience w/ reading this was honestly so magical

Enchanting Transformation

The enchantment of the title is apt, as there is an almost magical feel about the power of a beautiful landscape.

This is a carefully observed story of characters and transformation – including, perhaps, the reader. It constantly juxtaposes light with underlying sadness and hope. It’s about finding the courage to shake off undeserved guilt, rattle convention, and be true to yourself – and thus to others in your life. “Now she had taken off all her goodness and left it behind her like a heap in rain-sodden clothes, and she only felt joy. She was naked of goodness, and was rejoicing in being naked.”

Everyone has some unspoken gap or sadness in their lives, despite outward ordinariness or even success. But inertia, fear, societal pressure keep them in their place. This is the story of what happens when each character takes a small, uncharacteristic step away from the quotidian, leading to more significant steps. Everyone is changed, some more quickly and dramatically than others.

It sounds sentimental, and at times feels a little so (especially near the end), and yet it is delightful and waspishly Wildean. It's also a little unbelievable - but if the enchantment works for you, you'll forgive that.

Plot

This section is not a spoiler, and says little more than the blurb on the book itself. The real plot is the character development.

Mrs Wilkins is “running her listless eye down the Agony Column” when she spots an advert to rent an Italian castle for a month. It’s way beyond her means, but the mention of its wisteria is a draw, especially when she “stared out at the dripping street”. Wisteria has many mentions in the book, along with other flowers, but really, it’s the people who are flowering: in a new environment, they are liberated in ways that did not seem possible back in England in 1922.

Mrs Wilkins asks Mrs Arbuthnot, who she knows by sight from church, to come with her. They then advertise for two other women to join them and share the cost.

As soon as they arrive in Italy, despite a bad journey, “the whole inflamed sore dreariness, had faded to the dimness of a dream”. The weather was not initially welcoming, “But it was Italy. Nothing it did could be bad. The very rain was different— straight rain, falling properly on to one's umbrella; not that violently blowing English stuff that got in everywhere”.

The four women differ in age, outlook, social position, relationship status and more. Inevitably, men are added to the picture.

Humour comes from attempts to nab the best room, the etiquette of who is hostess (the one who initiated it, the most senior by age or rank; it certainly confuses the Italian staff), a dodgy boiler, and later, somewhat farcical aspects of mistaken assumptions and who is partnered with who.

It was only when I was half way through, I realised how apposite the timing was. It’s about four strangers who rent an Italian castle in April. I read it in August, finishing the day before I headed to France and Italy, for a trip that included staying in a villa with a group that included friends and strangers. I wasn’t as transformed as the characters here, but I think I unfurled a little.

Cast

This is the heart of the book.

Lotty Wilkins

She is a quiet, introverted woman in her mid 30s who seems older and more humble than she is. She thinks of herself as poor and still has a clothing allowance from her father – yet she’s married to a solicitor, lives in Hampstead and has a club.

“She was the kind of person who is not noticed at parties. Her clothes, infested by thrift, made her practically invisible.”

But she is also impulsive: she takes the initiative with the castle and she has a tendency to say what she thinks – not in a rude way, but it can seem a little improper or presumptive to others, particularly when saying what and why she thinks they are feeling.

She justifies the extravagance of the holiday in the expectation that she will return a nicer person. Her first night alone in five years feels strange, but there is joy and power in “her room bought with her own savings, the fruit of her careful denials, whose door she could bolt if she wanted to, and nobody had the right to come in”.

She is almost instantly transformed by the heavenly setting, relaxing and gaining confidence. In Rose’s eyes, Lotty was “impetuously becoming a saint. Could one really attain goodness so violently?” In the spirit of bliss, she invites her husband to join her – without consulting the others. He notices there is “not a shred of fear of him left in her” and there is a virtuous circle of her happiness and his warm response.

Mellersh Wilkins

Lotty’s husband is thrifty with everything, except for food – even words, thus “producing the impression of keeping copies of everything he said”. He’s an ambitious networker, and unlike his wife, he “gave a party, merely by coming to it, a great air.”

At home, he’s colder. Wanting to escape “the persistent vileness of the weather”, he proposes a holiday, and “as it would cause comment if he did not take his wife, take her he must—besides, she would be useful… for holding things, for waiting with the luggage”! (That holiday didn’t happen.)

At the castle, as more people arrive and there are shades of bedroom farce, he relishes – and cultivates - the possibility of legal advice arising from the apparently complex web of relationships. He is grudgingly grateful to Lotty for this opportunity - not that he says so to her. Lady Caroline warms to him, because he’s not predatory like other men; in fact he’s just as predatory, but not in a sexual sense.

Rose Arbuthnot

Her life is governed by “God, Husband, Home, Duty”. “The very way Mrs Arbuthnot parted her hair suggested a great calm that could only proceed from wisdom.” She’s a pillar of the church, leading good works and giving to the poor, in part to appease her guilt at her husband’s new – and profitable – career of writing salacious fictitious memoirs of kings’ mistresses and their ilk: “Her very nest egg was the fruit, posthumously ripened, of ancient sin”. She feels guilty about the extravagance of her holiday, despite her husband’s generosity.

She’s 33 and has been married for 13 years, and mourns “This separate life, this freezing loneliness”. Their only baby died. When she goes to Italy, she doesn’t tell her husband beforehand, but merely leaves him a note that doesn’t even say where she’s gone. She avoids talking about him and is happy for Mrs Fisher to assume her a widow.

Rose’s transformation is slower and more painful than Lotty’s. Previously, “Her scheduled life in the parish had prevented memories and desires from intruding on her.” She now has time to think, but finds it hard to pray. “San Salvatore had taken her carefully built-up semblance of happiness away from her, and given her nothing in exchange.” She’s more aware of her love for her husband and the loss of their baby. “How passionately she longed to be important to somebody again… privately important, just to one other person.”

Nevertheless, seeing Lotty’s happiness, she eventually invites Frederick, despite her perpetual fear she’ll bore him. He arrives oddly quickly.

Frederick Arbuthnot

Rose’s writer husband is rarely at home, but “he never went out of the house without her blessing going with him too, hovering, like a little echo of finished love.” He’s hurt by her disapproval of his writing, her reluctance to spend his money, and the way she has drifted away from him. He’s 40 and moves in social circles as the author of titillating potboilers. His life bristles with complications, but he’s quick-witted and laid back.

Lady Caroline Dester, aka Scrap

She’s a beautiful, rich, “extravagantly slender”, young flapper, tired of the social whirl. She sees herself as “a spoilt, a sour, a suspicious, and a selfish spinster”, though no one else does.

She is “wholly taken up by one great longing, a longing to get away from everybody she had ever known”, including those she’s sharing the castle with. Her success is limited in part by an odd inability to seem nasty or cross. For example, “what felt to her an indignant stare appeared to Mrs. Fisher as really charming docility”.

She has “the deep and melancholy fatigue, of the too much” which turns out to mean being constantly “grabbed” by men, “it was just as if she didn't belong to herself, wasn't her own at all, but was regarded as a universal thing, a sort of beauty-of-all-work”. The only man she loved and would have married had died in the war. “She was afraid of nothing in life except love” and “Nothing bored her so much as people who insisted on being original”.

Mrs Fisher

A rather stuffy, proper widow of 65. Some of her lines are reminiscent of Lady Bracknell. She’s living on memories not of her husband, but the great literary figures she knew as a child, always name-dropping, even in her own thoughts: Ruskin, Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, as well as the President of the Royal Academy, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Governor of the Bank of England. She’s well off, but rather parsimonious. Her house was inherited and “Death had furnished it for her”. Her husband had “behaved very much like maccaroni. He had slipped, he had wriggled, he had made her feel undignified”, though we’re spared details.

Eventually, inevitably, Mrs Fisher has “a ridiculous feeling as if she were presently going to burgeon. Sternly she tried to frown the unseemly sensation down. Burgeon, indeed. She had heard of dried staffs, pieces of mere dead wood, suddenly putting forth fresh leaves, but only in legend. She was not in legend… Dignity demanded that she should have nothing to do with fresh leaves at her age; and yet there it was—the feeling that presently, that at any moment now, she might crop out all green.”

Thomas Briggs

He’s the owner, in his early 30s. He’s keen to settle down and have a family. He’s the human manifestation of the transformative power of the castle itself.

Lotty and Rose met him in London prior to renting the house. He assumed them to be widows and took a fancy to Rose, so he decides to visit. “The more Mr Briggs thought Rose charming the more charming she became.” He, an orphan, affects childless Mrs Fisher, too, “blossoming out into real amiability the moment some one came along who was charming to her”. Then he sees Lady Caroline… And of course she assumes he’s just another grabber.

Ferdinand Arundel

A writer who fancies Lady Caroline, and tracks her down in the castle, via her mother.

He’s actually Frederick Arbuthnot in Hampstead and Ferdinand Arundel in town, rather like Jack/Earnest in The Importance of Being Earnest (see my review HERE).

Quotes

•tA “prolonged quarrel… conducted with dignified silence on one side and earnest apology on the other.”

•t“To be missed, to be needed… was… better than the complete loneliness of not being missed or needed at all.”

•t“Incredible as it may seem, seeing how they get into everything, Mrs. Wilkins had never come across any members of the aristocracy.”

•t“All the radiance of April in Italy lay gathered together at her feet. The sun poured in on her. The sea lay asleep in it, hardly stirring. Across the bay the lovely mountains, exquisitely different in colour, were asleep too in the light; and underneath her window, at the bottom of the flower-starred grass slope from which the wall of the castle rose up, was a great cypress, cutting through the delicate blues and violets and rose-colours of the mountains and the sea like a great black sword.”

•t“Up to now she had had to take what beauty she could as she went along, snatching at little bits of it when she came across it… She had never been in definitely, completely beautiful places.”

•t“This was the simple happiness of complete harmony with her surroundings, the happiness that asks for nothing, that just accepts, just breathes, just is.”

•t“She was having a violent reaction against beautiful clothes and the slavery they impose on one… gave one no peace till they had been everywhere and been seen by everybody. You didn't take your clothes to parties; they took you.”

•t“Colour seemed flung down anyhow, anywhere; every sort of colour, piled up in heaps, pouring along in rivers… They stood looking at this crowd of loveliness, this happy jumble, in silence.”

•t“How and where husbands slept should be known only to their wives. Sometimes it was not known to them, and then the marriage had less happy moments; but these moments were not talked about either.” Shades of Lady Bracknell.

•tHer face “became elaborately uninterested”.

•t“There were many things she disliked more than anything else.”

•t“It is true she liked him most when he wasn't there, but then she usually liked everybody most when they weren't there.”

•t“Inheritance was more respectable than acquisition. It did indicate fathers; and in an age where most people appeared neither to have them nor to want them she liked this too.”

•t“He certainly looked exactly like a husband, not at all like one of those people who go about abroad pretending they are husbands.”

•t“The marvelous night stole in through all one's chinks, and brought in with it… enormous feelings—feelings one couldn't manage.”

More Adult Story

For a sexed up version of something slightly similar, see DH Lawrence's short story, Sun, which I reviewed HERE.

The Film

The 1991 film is very good, really capturing the atmosphere of the book, though I'm glad I read the book first: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101811/?...

The excellent cast includes Miranda Richardson (Rose), Josie Lawrence (Lotty), Joan Plowright (Mrs Fisher), Jim Broadbent (Frederick Arbuthnot), Alfred Molina (Mellersh Wilkins), and Michael Kitchen (Mr Briggs).


WARNING ABOUT THIS EDITION OF THE BOOK (Watchmaker Publishing)

I don’t know if this was transcribed from audio, or badly scanned, or even if it’s been this way for nearly a century, but my copy has a lot of odd typos. (American spelling was also a surprise.)

•t“I wonder got which is best."

•t“they each hand over a reasonable sun every week”

•t“When Lady Caroline wants is one dose”

•t“a hurried scribble, showing how much bored he was at doing it”

•t“"You se," Mrs. Wilkins said”

•t“they each out to have somebody happy inside them”

•t“if any one was shaken of it was she herself”

•t“He had not hear her.”

There are also some unpaired quotation marks, some serif and some not.

Image source: http://been-seen.com/archive/2032.jpg

After my last, very intense read, I needed something...I dunno...happy? Surrounded by flowers? Under warm, blue skies? Lounging by the Mediterranean Sea? And yes! -that’s it - in sunny Italy!

The four ladies of Enchanted April painted this scene with understated humor (really, the very best kind) while I sipped tea, served by Mrs. Fisher not Mrs. Arbuthnot, in the garden at San Salvatore castle.

At the beginning, the choppy, rambling syntax provided no reading flow and I re-read many sentences before I became used to it. The transformation of the ladies and the visitors to the castle, plus the evolving theme are one of the most unique and pleasant styles I have come across. Happiness now :)

In the words of Cole Porter, It’s delightful, It’s delicious, It’s de-lovely

The Enchanted April is sweet and soothing and heartwarming, like the holiday we find ourselves on with Lotty, Rose, Caroline and Mrs. Fisher. First off, I loved all the descriptions of the grounds and the gardens. I could see the Judas tree in bloom, the wisteria draping the arbors, and smell the frecias. The idea of a medieval castle in Italy was as charming to me as it was to Lotty Wilkins when she encountered the advertisement telling her it was available for let in April.

Lotty cannot afford a castle on her own steam, but she devises a plan that makes it possible by letting it on share with three strangers. These women are each dissatisfied with the lives they lead, they are lonely, they are stifled and they are unhappy. Over the course of a month, we watch them blossom, just like the flowers. There is nothing spectacular here, no tense dramatic plot line, no scintillating love story, but there is charm and a lesson about what you owe to self over what you owe to others that today’s women, who are busy in a different way, could still learn from.

I fell completely in love with Lotty. She was positive and friendly in the best possible way. I loved the way she bonded with the other characters and pulled them together. I loved her forgiving nature, her political incorrectness, her ability to separate the important from the petty, her honest and free nature, her love for life.

I enjoyed every paragraph of this charmer and it was exactly the breath of fresh air that I needed...my own little holiday in Italy.

The prose in this book is absolutely exquisite. The descriptions of San Salvatore (really Castello Brown in Portofino) are to die for, and Von Arnim's character studies are so delicate and sensitive. The problem was that I really fucking hated the story. It is so infuriatingly sexist.

When the book begins, Mrs. Wilkins and Mrs. Arbuthnot, women in their late twenties/early thirties, completely ignored, neglected and humiliated by their husbands, decided to rent a castle in Italy for a month to get away from their trash husbands and finally think of themselves for once in their lives. (They get two more women to go with them, the mean old lady Mrs Fisher and the gorgeous young Lady Caroline).

The first half of the book is excellent and I was enthralled as little by little the many sorrows of these women were exposed, and as they rediscovered their dignity and self-worth. Frankly I was hoping they would both get divorces and start a lesbian affair or at least find nice hot Italian young men but alas it was not to be.

Within the first day of arriving in the castle, Mrs. Wilkins decides she's going to invite her husband to join her, she's so full of joy and forgiveness for being in a beautiful place. Well it's only downhill from there. Mrs Wilkins and Mrs Arbuthnot discover that THEY were actually in the wrong in their marriages all the time, that they should have loved their husbands even if they didn't love them back, that they BORED them, that it was their fault they were cheated on, even!

And the husbands appear in San Salvatore for reasons that have nothing to do with their wives (Mr Wilkins, a lawyer, comes because he wants to make Lady Caroline his client; Mr Arbuthnot didn't even know his wife was going to be there and actually went to flirt with Lady Caroline), do not even realise or care that they were awful disgusting beasts to their wives for years, and proceed to do absolutely nothing in the way of amends. But now that the silly women accept that they were the awful ones and start acting nicer, the marriages are fixed! (Mrs Fisher discovers that she's unhappy because she's childless, and Lady Caroline of course is unhappy because she's unmarried, then proceeds to find a husband). AND THAT'S IT. THAT'S THE BOOK.

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Oh I've seen a lot of people go "oh but they had to reconcile with their husbands because this was written in the 1920s". But if this HAD to be the ending, the husbands should have at least gone to San Salvatore because THEY realised that they had been taking their wives for granted and treating them like garbage. They should have missed them. They should have acted consciously to change their ways. They should have grovelled and not even expected forgiveness. (This isn't a newfangled modern feminist idea either, it's right there in Pride and Prejudice for example, and that was written over 100 years before this.)

And another thing that really gets me is that, since no one actually talked about their problems, and the husbands didn't even realise they'd done anything wrong in the first place, these people are just going to go back to England and continue to have the same exact problems.

I'm just really mad at this book and at everyone who recommends it as a feel-good, romantic story.

Such a sweet story, almost cloying at times, yet so charming and amusing that it takes the edge off the mush.  I read this because I love the movie.  My taste in movies is vastly different from my reading preferences.  There is one difference in the movie from the book that I deem as well nigh brilliant.  Read this for the excellent characters and the lush prose.  You can almost see and smell the panoply of flowers, feel the warmth of the sun on your skin, and breathe in the fresh April air of Portofino, Italy.  You may just be transformed.

4.5 ★

The Enchanted April is an enchanting book!

Within the first couple of paragraphs I knew it was the book for me! I am still in Lockdown and I needed something that would help me escape the world's frightening realities. & mostly set in one of my favourite countries - what could be better?

Answer - not much!

A chance spotting of an advertisement leads to two virtual strangers, Lottie & Rose, deciding to rent an Italian castle together & have a month's escape from their dull, unhappy lives. The rent proves to be much more than they had envisaged, so they advertise and find two other ladies, the waspish, selfish Mrs Fisher and the self absorbed Lady Caroline. in different ways the ladies are transformed by their experiences and the beauty that they are living amongst. Von Arnim herself was supposed to be a very keen gardener and her love of plants shows in every word.

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n  All down the stone steps on either side were periwinkles in full flower, and she could now see what it was that had caught at her the night before and brushed, wet and scented, across her face. It was wisteria. Wisteria and sunshine . . . she remembered the advertisement. Here indeed were both in profusion. The wisteria was tumbling over itself in its excess of life, its prodigality of flowering; and where the pergola ended the sun blazed on scarlet geraniums, bushes of them, and nasturtiums in great heaps, and marigolds so brilliant that they seemed to be burning, and red and pink snapdragons, all outdoing each other in bright, fierce colour. The ground behind these flaming things dropped away in terraces to the sea, each terrace a little orchard, where among the olives grew vines on trellises, and fig-trees, and peach-trees, and cherry-trees. The cherry-trees and peach-trees were in blossom--lovely showers of white and deep rose-colour among the trembling delicacy of the olives; the fig-leaves were just big enough to smell of figs, the vine-buds were only beginning to show. And beneath these trees were groups of blue and purple irises, and bushes of lavender, and grey, sharp cactuses, and the grass was thick with dandelions and daisies, and right down at the bottom was the sea. Colour seemed flung down anyhow, anywhere; every sort of colour piled up in heaps, pouring along in rivers....n

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I knocked of half a ★ because I wasn't totally convinced by the resolution of some of storylines, but if you want to remember Italy in happier times or simply want an escape from grim reality, this could be the book for you!

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https://wordpress.com/view/carolshess...

There's a castle in Italy. Wisteria grows there. Can you picture the private wilderness? The castle is not important. It is a fortress to protect the plants. Don't tread on me. More importantly, can you see yourself there? It's a little place unmolested and unpressed on by who you are in all of those other places you can't quite see yourself in but you're still there all the same. If you wander around in that bit of wild life will you leave tracks in the dirt there too? You know that Camera Obscure song "Let's Get out of this Country" (great song)? "We'll find a cathedral city, you'll convince me I'm pretty." What does it take to convince you?! It's freaking pretty. There's wisteria! (Is that purple? The crayon called wisteria is purple. Color me stupid if I'm wrong.) It's a bit of land. Be pretty. I feel like I should know more songs about this. Kings of Convenience's "Gold in the Air of Summer". Patrick Wolf's "The Gypsy King". "How do I follow? What road to be choosing? Do I follow the star or The Gypsy King?" I know this feeling. I'm thinking the special thing about The Enchanted April is that desire. Let's get out of this country and we will shine like gold in the air of summer. (If you know more songs like this please share. I've felt for some time that it was a kind of song I should have been collecting.)

I know why the advertisement for the castle with the wisteria brought up such longing in Lotty Wilkins and Rose (I forgot how to spell her A name so we get to be on first name basis. I wish I felt better about this presumption). Sometimes I get to feeling too trapped in myself that going somewhere else helps so much. Going to the beach with a book (the mind escape is as vital). The taking of you out of what you can't shake as being a part of you. (Kristen tells me that I should kite surf when I get like that. I wish that I could afford one of these kites. I bet that kite surfing high would last.) I read with hope in my heart that they were going to really spend Lotty's nest egg (a life time of denying herself to save for a rainy day that she had not really intended on having. Oh!). Rose would get out of the guilt of what she believed she should be doing: religious guilt, the needs of others. Recurring problem in others and not a cliche at all. Elizabeth von Arnim is so good! I could feel the weight on their shoulders and it was enough. In November I went to Berlin with my twin sister. Spending all of the savings in one big go because the having that to look forward to is totally something I would do.

Is it so easy, though?

Elizabeth recommended this book to me (thank you, Elizabeth!!) because we were talking about breaking your own heart books. The special thing (I'm getting a bit obsessed with pinpointing to myself what makes something special) about The Enchanted April is that it takes that further. What's the missing part? What is going to become easier to carry if you do something for yourself that is solely for the pleasure of it? Paying attention to the wrong things and reasons until other people become part of that scenery you are the wrong you in. Why does changing something like the background alter the before unhindered path? If you willed yourself into the background I suppose it would...

I wasn't an all new Mariel in Berlin. There was the socially awkward moment typical to me when I bought tickets to the super famous Roman and Greek antiquities museums and then didn't go in because the employee was a bitch to me. I turned tail and ran. Then I fell down outside. And it started to rain! (When it happened I told myself that I'd never tell anyone it did.) The only thing missing was a teary Madonna track like the sob scene in Never Been Kissed (that only made me bawl like no movie has ever made me bawl in my life because I was pmsing!). Other times I had such fun doing things that I could really do at home, or any where else. It didn't take much. It's like the wisteria. I loved so much imagining the past when in historical sites. I liked that the people didn't seem to want to force themselves to exude happiness. I liked that no one knew me. It was an illusion of freedom that's really always there (and not an illusion), if the part of you that allows that is there. All new. Did Lady Caroline aka Scrap (ha! I loved it when von Arnim switches to identifying her as Scrap midway. Revenge!) really get pinned by what she thought were other's needs on her person? Lotty could talk as she could only in her head before because she wasn't nervous. Maybe it has to do with echoes of your own mistakes haunting you. If you leave the haunted house? I think there's a lot to be said for that bit of land.

The special thing about The Enchanted April is the desire to have that gold in the air of summer glow. Ah, but what about the after glow? I felt the potential. What about the April? I didn't feel like I got one enough. I don't know if this is a criticism or not. It's something that occurred to me and then stayed there in the back of my mind. Maybe I need a new setting to figure out what it is. The air between them -- Don't forget Mrs. Fisher, Mariel! Yes, they are accompanied by an old lady who has no one any longer. She holds onto her money because she WILL be taking it with her when she dies. She influenced me a bit towards Lotty, I must admit. Or I just agreed with her. Lotty lost me with all of her certainty once she is in the castle. She "sees" and knows and it is without question. What was the missing part of her and where was it found in Italy? It's true that a new morning can make what seemed hopeless the night before better. Was it something to be admired or does it just preclude me from knowing her beyond this? Will that good mood continue? I know that I wouldn't have been friends with Rose either. I think it is because they don't question a lot (and the goody two shoesness of it all). It was interesting that the air von Armin puts between them often reads like action that has taken place off stage. It wasn't important what happened as much as that it did. I'm not sure how I feel about that but it was an interesting dynamic, like a place out of time. Done deal. They were all in their own ruts for whatever reason (mostly the burden of expectation, perceived or otherwise) and took for granted. In a new place! I don't like to take for granted. (That's what is great about new places. You aren't used to them and you don't take for granted what you are not used to.)

Mrs. Fisher and Rose's battle to be the mistress of the castle was too funny. Rose follows up every request for tea or food something with the same. "Will you have some tea?" "Will you?" Neither of them understand why the other is doing what they are doing.

This is all my confused and roundabout way of saying that I felt the desire more than the change. Expectations persisted. Dammit, it was probably because I was not there. I could only see the advertisement for the wisteria... Why didn't they long for more when they got there. If you get the dream and then there are no more dreams then it is worse. I miss having the something to look forward to.

"How passionately she longed to be important to somebody again- not important on platforms, not important as an asset in an organization, but privately important, just to one other person, quite privately, nobody else to know or notice. It didn't seem much to ask in a world so crowded with people, just to have one of them, only one out of all the millions, to oneself. Somebody who needed one, who thought of one, who was eager to come to one- oh, oh how dreadfully one wanted to be precious!"

I want to see preciousness. If Scrap lived in mortal fear (it's all so life and death) of being grabbed at (it was all so tyrannical to her) then I live in ruin another perfectly good location fear of grabbing. I don't want to take it for granted that I "see" it all played out as Lotty does. Off stage? Not as good. Guess you can't get out of the country forever. Guess it is a good idea to find what the hell the missing thing is. The physics (I blame science) reason for breaking ones own heart in the first place is probably connected to that. And it feels less off stage if they notice as I'm noticing why they are doing those things. (I suspect it gets to that unimpeded train of expectations when what you're noticing is only what you are noticing. Not that I'm wise or nothing.)

P.s. I really liked this book! (But they aren't invited to my villa. I wanna be pretty and you be handsome with someone who will sit under the trees and not worry about what god thinks about it. At least I don't agonize over what is proper or not! It could be so much worse.)

I loved this book, which is obvious from my rarely given ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ rating. I adored the movie (one of the few I've seen more than once) and I also enjoyed the play on Broadway! Enchanted April is filled with the charm and beauty of Italy, beautiful language, humor and perhaps best of all the essence of female friendship. The author, Elizabeth von Arnim (1866–1941) writes with a feminist's sensibility, wit and whimsy. She is a wonderful novelist (published a total of 21 novels and was famous in her day) who is far too under-read today. As a matter of fact, I just now learned her most famous book, in her own time, was Elizabeth and Her German Garden, so I just purchased it on my Kindle for 99 cents. I have not as yet read it, but hopefully, I will.

For Downton Abbey fans, Elizabeth and Her German Garden was the book that in Downton Abbey, the character, Molesley who is Mathew Crawley's valet, gave to saintly servant Anna (who is at that point mourning an absent Bates) a book,
in the hopes that an intimate tête-à-tête about the book will be conducive to romance. Anna hurriedly suggests a book group. Perhaps more than you needed to know in a review of The Enchanted April, but I thought it was a fascinating aside.

I will end this review with a line that I love to quote from The Enchanted April: - "TO THOSE WHO APPRECIATE WISTERIA AND SUNSHINE SMALL MEDIEVAL ITALIAN CASTLE on the shores of the Mediterranean to be Let furnished for the month of April. "

Just the best kind of novel. Layered, funny, astute, and just lovely through and through.

OKAY, LET THE GUSHING BEGIN.

Oooohhhhh not to be unoriginal, but really the perfect word to describe this book is “enchanting”.

My word was this good.

There’s something about certain classics written in the 1920s/1930s that is simply so charming. The simple yet eloquent sentences, the glorious fashions, the tea-drinking in gardens and letter-writing in drawing-rooms.

Oh, what I wouldn’t give for an escape to San Salvatore right about now!

Although I doubt going there would be as good as reading the book itself. Unless I had a Lotty Wilkins to accompany me and a husband to summon, I doubt my stay could be as delightful as this was. The Enchanted April was as unrealistic a novel as they come, but what an escape!

What a perfectly blissful, gloriously romantic journey. Elizabeth von Arnim has such a way with words, this book simply oozes with beauty, from Lady Caroline to the flowering gardens, and the last, sublime moonlit scene. The epitome of romantic charm, my friends. Love itself, with a capital L. Heaven, as Lotty would say.

I will admit, it started slowly. It was a great, promising beginning, but it was a bit slow (I also got very busy after I started it and went for a while without reading it, so maybe that’s why). It was very relatable, however.

Two women, on a rainy English day, find an ad in a newspaper about a castle in Italy to be let for the month of April. It seems too extraordinary to even consider it, especially since neither woman plans on telling her husband.

But just think – the ad promises wisteria and sunshine! How does one resist?

Besides, life is so suffocatingly dull in Hampstead. For Lotty Wilkins, it’s lonely and miserable; her days consist of feeling shy and awkward and getting her husband’s fish for dinner. It rains and it’s depressing. And for Rose Arbuthnot, life consists in burying her unhappiness by helping the poor every second of the day, trying her best to forget that her husband doesn’t love her anymore.
So then, why not? Why not seize this marvelous chance and escape for a month? Just one glorious, delicious month amid the wisteria and sunshine, living in a castle in Italy.

Husbands can be left alone for a month, can’t they? They need never find out.

So Rose and Lotty decide in their turn to advertise and see if a couple more women would like to join to help reduce the cost. Their only two applicants are Lady Caroline Dester, an incomparable beauty in desperate need of solitude, and the elderly Mrs. Fisher, also in desperate need of a change of scenery.

These four incredibly different women therefore journey to San Salvatore to Escape Life for a month.

But Life, of course, has other plans, and coupled with Love, manages to intervene in unforeseen yet amazing ways. For the endless charms of San Salvatore work on everyone like a magical spell. The reader not the least of whom will be most affected.

If The Enchanted April doesn’t make you sigh with happiness, melt at the impossibly satisfactory ending, and dream of undying, passionate romance, I don’t know what will.
What an utterly, thoroughly moving and transformative self-discovering journey. Filled with humour, beautiful flowers, luscious landscapes, and perfectly wonderful characters, The Enchanted April is escapism at its best. With just enough common sense to compensate for its sweet, unrealistic romantic elements, this book is quite the delight.

And if you happen to love flowers and are interested in hand embroidery, head on over to my blog The Diary of a Northern Belle, to see my latest project inspired from this book! I explore some flower meanings based on the Victorian Language of Flowers and stitch happy flowers.

Who would have thought that a novel written almost a hundred years ago can bring so much pleasure and delight during our present troubled times? When safe distancing is mandated and travel outside one’s country fast becoming a thing of the past (hopefully not), it is especially refreshing to take a trip somewhere, even if only in our minds.

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim, published in 1922, is dedicated to all who ‘appreciate wisteria and sunshine.’ Four women in England, strangers to each other, answered an advertisement to rent a medieval castle in Italy for the month of April. Each needs to get away from her family for different reasons and harbors hopes that leaving the greyness and dreary rain in Hampstead for vistas of spring flowers, the mountains, and the sea will be restorative.

The four guests at San Salvatore include two housewives (Mrs. Wilkins and Mrs. Arbuthnot) whose marriages have lost their shine, an elderly widow (Mrs. Foster) who lives in the past, and a very beautiful, single, aristocrat (Lady Caroline) fleeing suffocation from her adoring fan club. I was the unseen guest and had a fine time getting acquainted with the idiosyncrasies of each person. It was like a mini study in human behavior. How do strangers who had to share close quarters (albeit in a gorgeous castle) relate to one another? However, what lent this book its charm is the way the beautiful locale worked its magic and brought out the best in people who had little in common with each other.

As is true when traveling with others, the foursome have to adjust to their companions’ quirks and habits. It was not at all surprising to observe them sizing each other up, protecting their own turf, and subtly (or firmly) making their preferences known. Hence, it was lovely that the ladies became friends when initially there was quiet competition for special corners in the castle or rooms with the most fetching views, and even who sat at the head of the table.

I was as excited as Mrs. Wilkins and Mrs. Arburthnot who arrived at San Salvatore when night had fallen and could not wait to look out of the window when morning dawned. Picture this: ‘The wisteria was tumbling over itself in its excess of life, its prodigality of flowering; and where the pergola ended the sun blazed on scarlet geraniums, bushes of them, and marigolds so brilliant that they seemed to be burning, and red and pink snapdragons, all outdoing each other in bright, fierce colour.’ Picture also its impact: ‘They stood looking at this crowd of loveliness, this happy jumble, in silence. No, it didn’t matter what Mrs. Fisher did; not here, not in such beauty.’

The irony is not lost on me that I read The Enchanted April set in Italy at a time when the coronavirus has cast a darkening gloom across the globe. I enjoyed this vicarious vacation in Italy, a country I have visited and love, and am saddened by how horribly it has been affected by the scourge. I am grateful for this lovely book that offered amusement and laughter. The vacation turns out pitch perfect for all four guests. It is too good to be true, but who cares?