My first Novel by Elizabeth Von Arnim and while it was an ok read I wont be adding any more of her novels to reading list. It's a charming and breezy and probably works if you like that kind of thing. I however was hoping for more a Daphne du Maurier feel to it and therefore this book just didn't work for me.

The novel tells the story of four dissimilar English Ladies who go on holiday to Italy after seeing an advertisement for a small medieval castle on the beautiful Italian Rivera.
I love novels set in in Italy and having visited Portofino I could not resist this classic and bought it on a whim.

I have to be honest from the very first chapter I realized this wasn't my type of novel and I just couldn't connect or make an effort with the characters. I loved the setting and magic of Portofino but the novel was slow and a little too sweet for me.

An ok read but not one for my favorites shelf.

I was to have been in Italy right now. Flights, accommodation, gallery tickets, all were booked months ago. I had even chosen books to take along.

So much faith in April being exactly how I'd planned seems innocent now.
And holidays have become unimportant—they are frills I can easily live without. In fact I've discovered I can live without a lot of things I used to think were essential, visiting friends, for example, going for long walks, browsing in bookshops, eating out. Eating at home has changed too as we rely more and more on food deliveries, which never contain quite what was ordered. I've become very good at doing without certain ingredients and using others in their place.

Instead of the long walks I loved, I walk in the garden now, though it's quite a tiny space. Never before have I paid so much attention to every sprouting tendril on the climbing plants, every hint of a bud. The simplest things thrill me, such as spotting that the wisteria that was planted three years ago and which had never yet flowered looks like it finally will. I can identify more bird species than I knew existed in my part of the world, and I've begun to recognise their calls. Instead of feeling imprisoned during this quarantine time, it's as if my life has opened up. The garden makes me feel good, it even makes me feel exuberant.

One thing that hasn't changed in my life is reading—I probably own enough books to see me through many quarantine seasons. I didn't own The Enchanted April though, in spite of having wished to read it in the past. When a friend reviewed it last week, it struck me as just the book I needed right now so I got it as an ebook. The plot of this novel concerns a holiday in Italy in April, and the story features a garden full of beautiful plants including wisteria. I enjoyed the book a lot. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I downloaded another book by Elizabeth Von Armin immediately on finishing. The second book, Elizabeth and Her German Garden, is a kind of memoir of a garden she owned at one point in her life. After reading it, I understood why the garden in The Enchanted April played such a big role. And I appreciated the character called Lotty Wilkins even more than I did initially—there's a lot of Elizabeth Von Armin in Lotty. It's in her delight in flowers, in her unusual forthrightness, and in her wonderfully exuberant personality. I really enjoyed Lotty.

n  “It was, that year, a particularly wonderful spring, and of all the months at San Salvatore April, if the weather was fine, was best. May scorched and withered; March was restless, and could be hard and cold in its brightness; but April came along softly like a blessing, and if it were a fine April it was so beautiful that it was impossible not to feel different, not to feel stirred and touched.”n

One of my aunts recently introduced me to fruit infused water. In the scorching Texas heat, which has already begun its brutal descent, cucumber lemon water has been extremely refreshing and invigorating–a definite heat repellant. That’s exactly how I would describe the taste and effect of this book on me after my previous reading choices.

Four British women, all strangers and unique to each other, let a castle high up on the Italian Riviera in April to escape the dismal London weather. Although initially all seem to be evading the weather and personal living situations, the magical effects of their surroundings in Italy produce profound effects on each of them. At once introspective, each begins to realize what they yearn for most, and go about setting things to rights.

While the theme reminded me of several of E.M. Forster’s novels, I loved the unique female perspective of each character. At turns hilarious and romantic, I enjoyed every aspect of it so much so that I color coded each character with sticky note flags so I could easily find passages when a good laugh is needed. I was smitten by all of the women, and found bits of myself in each of them. Von Arnim's poetic descriptions of gardens and the lush landscapes also enriched the novel; I felt like I was there. What an affordable and ideal way to travel!

Surely an appealing concept: four very different women, strangers at the outset, on a month-long hiatus in a sea-side castle in Italy. This venture is bound to go either extremely well or very badly. Elizabeth Von Arnim has presented us with a craftily written comedy of manners, helped along by deep insight into the personality, habits, and state of mind of each of the women. We follow their transformation, under the influence of San Salvatore—its sunny gardens, floral aromas, and stunning Mediterranean vistas—and how each character in turn is changed by the presence and personalities of the others.
I’m quite sure that some readers will find all of this too hopelessly romantic; and much of it certainly requires suspension of disbelief. But we must have understood to begin with what we were letting ourselves in for; and Von Arnim manages to overcome much of those objections by virtue of the intriguing complexity of her characters, the shameless charm of her setting and the appeal of her fluid prose. Von Arnim is very kind to her characters; I found it difficult to complain about what she does with them. This is a charming example of what can be done with admittedly lightweight material in the hands of a skilled writer.
I will now watch the film that was made out of this novel. I will be most interested to see how successfully the personalities and inner experiences of the characters can be brought out on the screen.

A thoroughly delightful read - charming, beautiful and witty.

Elizabeth von Arnim strikes me as an interesting character. A writer brought up in influential circles, she married no less than five times in her life, and also enjoyed an affair with writer H.G. Wells after he ended his own affair with Von Arnim's rival Rebecca West. When one of von Arnim's disastrous marriages ended in 1921, she decided to spend a month at Italian castello Portofino as a way to clear her head. The idea for her classic book The Enchanted April has been born. Von Arnim had the book published in 1922, and today it merits inclusion in Erica Bauermeister's book 500 Great Books by Women. This book is as charming as the spell cast by Portofino castle, and is still widely read today.

Lotty Wilkins and Rose Arbuthnot lived a life of relative obscurity in the Hampstead section of London. Both were virtually ignored by their husbands and had the longing to get away from it all. One day, Lotty Wilkins noticed an advertisement in the Times to rent an Italian villa named San Salvatore in April for £ 60. Mesmerized by the idea but not wanting to spend her entire nest egg on the castle, she recruits Arbuthnot to join her. Later, the women ask Lady Caroline Dester and a Mrs Fisher to join them as well, making the pair into a foursome, and, more importantly, making the castle rental into an affordable getaway.

Even though Wilkins and Arbuthnot made the initial arrangements, Mrs Fisher and Lady Caroline shrewdly arrive at the castle first to claim the better rooms for themselves. The latter two women enjoy a higher standard of living than the former and want to ensure that they have an enjoyable holiday. Almost instantaneously, San Salvatore works its magic on all four women. An air of happiness overtakes them and rather than being bitter with their station in life, they talk of love being in the air. Wilkins and Arbuthnot originally came to the castle to get away from their husbands, but within a week, both women write their husbands asking them to join them in this enchanting setting.

Within the month, all four women are the best of friends, although this takes time, especially with Mrs Fisher. I thought the writing was basic yet descriptive and the plot to be straightforward with few twists and turns along the way. Von Arnim was writing from personal experience and recreated the Portofino castello where she enjoyed a monthlong holiday. This book was originally published within a year of her excursion, so the memories were fresh, especially the descriptions of the sea air and ever changing flowers. These descriptions of time and place ended up working for me much better than the plot developments.

While Von Arnim's novel is considered her greatest book, it did not captivate me completely. I enjoyed the seaside setting of the Italian castle, but I enjoy a complex plot of intrigue as well as multilayered character development. The ladies here while pleasant do not pack the punch for me as protagonists, although I give them much credit, especially in their era, for desiring a holiday independent of their husbands. The Enchanted April was a pleasant read for a lazy summer afternoon. I am sure the castle itself would have cast its spell on me as it did the ladies in this book, but the novel will not be an all time favorite for me. Still, The Enchanted April is a worthwhile read, which I rate 3.5 stars.

A lovely book and great characterisationeven though Lady Caroline does get on my nerves . Noone can appear THAT angelic when they really want to be a bit nasty, but it's not her fault, it's the author who overexaggerates that bit and repeats it ad nauseam..

Not much chance for a detailed review, but maybe I get there some day.

“Because always pain had been close at hand in that other happiness, ready to torture with doubts, to torture even with the very excess of her love; while this was the simple happiness of complete harmony with her surroundings, the happiness that asks for nothing, that just accepts, just breathes, just is.”

The perfect book to read during the month of April, The Enchanted April is an enchanting little book that focuses on the transformation of four strangers who decide, on a whim, to rent San Salvatore, a castle in full bloom on the Italian Riveria. This is the perfect spring story brimming with pure happiness and transformation as we watch these women find themselves and bloom again (or for the first time) after spending so many years preoccupied with other matters. In direct contrast to dreary England, Italy, with it’s beautiful wisteria and new flowers blooming every week, is a place for a subtle transformation that takes place when one is at peace with oneself and one’s surroundings. My edition had an excellent introduction by Salley Vickers and I find that this quote from her introduction; “Joy, mirth, sympathy and kindness are magical in their effects, and it does no harm in our cynical and materialistic age to be reminded that we have it in us to enjoy these states of mind and exercise these powers.” sums up the sentiment of this book perfectly. It is so lovely to see a book that is just happy and I had a lot of fun and peace whilst reading it.

“May scorched and withered; March was restless, and could be hard and cold in its brightness; but April came along softly like a blessing, and if it were a fine April it was so beautiful that it was impossible not to feel different, not to feel stirred and touched.”

This is primarily a story of the transformation of our four strangers as they stay in San Salvatore. We follow the timid Mrs Wilkins, the overworked Mrs Arbuthnot, the judgmental Mrs Fisher, and the stuck-up Lady Caroline as the atmosphere of San Salvatore transforms them at different rates and in different ways. There is such joy and beauty in reading this book that really does just exemplify how important rest and relaxation is. I don’t want to say much about any of the women because their transformation really is the meat of this story, but there is a common theme of just letting go. The act of freeing oneself from the constraints places upon them is an act that creates immeasurable joy and peace. The women perfectly balanced each other and their transformations were staggered in a way that kept me interested in the story. I found myself smiling often at this book, a lot of the time when watching the women become the happiest versions of themselves.

“Strange how easily even the greatest men were moved by exteriors.”

While I did find some comic relief in the addition of the men, they were ultimately disappointing (but maybe that was the point?). I’m just going to say it: Mrs Arbuthnot deserved better. As did Lady Caroline. Before the men were introduced, I found there to be some poignant explorations of Mrs Arbuthnot coming to terms with not having to dedicate her whole life to servitude and finally opening the doors to love her husband and I was so excited to see that reunion take place. Additionally, I found Lady Catherine being able to be in a place where she wasn’t constantly harassed by men because they felt that they were entitled to her beauty. I was pretty happy with where both of these were going and how being able to fully be themselves without expectation—internal or external—that had been put on them for so long. While the men were used to show how the ways in which the women had changed and how they now responded to things differently, the insertion of them broke this ideal of paradise for me as none of them really changed into better/happier people. While the women were forgiving, happy, and loving the men still only loved the women when they could give them something or do something for them. Their love felt so transactional and shallow compared to this friendship that we were only just beginning to explore. I felt myself losing interest in the book as the men invaded and the serene spell of San Salvator quickly crumbled before me. Maybe that’s the point, but it still made me a bit sad to say goodbye so soon.

“They had lived for a while in the very heart of poetry.”

While this book didn’t stick the landing for me, I was enamored with the vast majority of it. Von Armin created the most exquisite atmosphere that exuded beauty and serenity. Reading this felt as though I was wading through a dream land and I was always disappointed when I had to put it down. My new goal in life is to find a beautiful Italian villa (or castle, fingers crossed) by the sea and rent it out with a bunch of people I don’t know that well (any takers?) because I am now convinced that that will completely transform my life (no husbands randomly showing up near the end of the vacation allowed, I don’t want a repeat of the end of this book, serious inquiries only). Thank you, emma for joining me on this magical journey. I hope this made you want to go to Italy and relive a version of this book as much as it made me.

This was a delightful little story! Four women, previously unknown to one another, leave a dreary winter in England behind to take a one month April holiday in a small, charming Italian castle after responding to an advertisement in a newspaper. The descriptions of the landscape are very lush and made me wish that I could make such an escape myself after a seemingly never-ending winter.

“By the end of the week the fig-trees were giving shade, the plum-blossom was out among the olives, the modest weigelias appeared in their fresh pink clothes, and on the rocks sprawled masses of thick-leaved, star-shaped flowers, some vivid purple and some a clear, pale lemon.”

The novel is also sprinkled with humor throughout as the four very different personalities either bluntly clash with one another or surreptitiously try to avoid one or another of the group. I often found myself smiling at some of their little antics and remarks. Each woman begins with her own struggle, discontent, and preconceived notions of what is expected of her as a female member of society.

Lotty Wilkins, who is the first to embrace the charms of Italy and is the quintessential transformed spirit in the novel, begins her journey as one who really has very little confidence in herself. “Her clothes, infested by thrift, made her practically invisible; her face was non-arresting; her conversation was reluctant; she was shy.”

Rose Arbuthnot, the religious and charitable but lonely wife, is initially described: “Steadfast as the points of the compass to Mrs. Arbuthnot were the great four facts of life: God, Husband, Home, Duty… Frederick had been the kind of husband whose wife betakes herself early to the feet of God. From him to them had been a short though painful step.”

Mrs. Fisher, the elderly widow, who leaves England for Italy with the notion that “Hardly anything was really worth while, except the past… She had not come away from these friends (in London), these conversable ripe friends, in order to spend her time in Italy chatting with three persons of another generation and defective experience; she had come away merely to avoid the treacheries of a London April.”

And finally, the beautiful, unattached Lady Caroline, never without a suitor to her own exasperation, believes “Worse than jokes in the morning did she hate the idea of husbands.” She wishes to be left completely alone and yet she seems to attract everyone to her; and her coldness and biting remarks towards others is unnoticed due to her overwhelming beauty. “People were exactly like flies. She wished there were nets for keeping them off too. She hit at them with words and frowns, and like the fly they slipped between her blows and were untouched.”

Ultimately, no one is immune to the enchantments of Italy and companionship and each undergo their own individual transformations. They learn the value of friendship and that “Beauty made you love, and love made you beautiful.”

Perhaps one would say that this book was too neat and tidy, maybe a bit unrealistic. However, I felt it was a breath of fresh air and a great reminder that a little respite and new acquaintances can help immensely to renew a dampened spirit.

The environment is dreary… Living from day to day is a dull routine… But one drab day an eye meets a very promising advertisement in the newspaper…

She was reading about the mediaeval castle and the wistaria, or rather had read about it ten minutes before, and since then had been lost in dreams, – of light, of colour, of fragrance, of the soft lapping of the sea among little hot rocks…

It all looks unbelievably fantastic… But knock and the door will be opened… At last all the seemingly insurmoutable obstacles are surmounted and she’s in the castle…

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.

So now there are four visiting women in the castle: a blithe optimist, a pessimistic do-gooder, an old arrogant snob and a young tired of society socialite craving for solitude…

The idea of Mrs. Fisher bursting out into anything, she who seemed so particularly firmly fixed inside her buttons, made Mrs. Arbuthnot laugh. She condoned Lotty’s loose way of talking of heaven, because in such a place, on such a morning, condonation was in the very air. Besides, what an excuse there was.
And Lady Caroline, sitting where they had left her before breakfast on the wall, peeped over when she heard laughter, and saw them standing on the path below, and thought what a mercy it was they were laughing down there and had not come up and done it round her.

But the atmosphere of the castle and the genius loci were doing their work so the guests couldn’t feel anything but affability… Their attitude to reality and to each other starts altering…

…they too felt a working going on inside themselves: they felt more cleared, both of them, that second week…

To see our life in a new light we need changes.

Four proper English ladies, who don't know each other at all, decide to pool their resources and rent an Italian villa for a month, in the 1920's. They all have different personalities and there are some conflicting expectations. To make matters worse, the husband of one of the women, who has had an estranged marriage, shows up pursuing one of the other women, without realizing his wife is another of the guests. How can this possibly not go south really fast?


I saw the movie version of this book when it came out about 1992. Somehow I talked my fiancée (now husband) into seeing it with me; memory and imagination fail as to how exactly I pulled that off. So we're watching the first part of the movie as these British ladies try to figure out how to pull off a month-long vacation trip to Italy (without husbands), and their lives are dreary, and they arrive in Italy and it's dark and rainy and everyone's confused and upset, and my guy and I are both thinking, man, this is so going to be either bleak or angsty, which is so not either of our thing.

Then morning dawns and it's just absolutely lovely. And the rest of the movie is too.



So I'm surprised that it took me so long to read this 1922 book, especially since it's a Gutenberg freebie. But I finally did, and it's as delightful as the movie, though there are a few interesting differences.* What I most appreciated in this book is the additional insights into the characters, and how they grow and are changed by Italy and by their association with each other. When two of the ladies initially show some real selfishness in Italy, one of the other ladies, Rose, wants to fight back and assert herself, and I'm all, yes! Don't let them get away with this! Stand up for your rights! But Lotty tells Rose to let it go.

"What is rather silly," said Mrs. Wilkins with much serenity, "is to mind. I can't see the least point in being in authority at the price of one's liberty."

Lotty was wiser than both of us. Let it be, and let love and beauty and acceptance work their changes in their own time.

Scrap looked up at the pine-tree motionless among stars. Beauty made you love, and love made you beautiful. . .

She pulled her wrap closer round her with a gesture of defence, of keeping out and off. She didn't want to grow sentimental. Difficult not to, here; the marvelous night stole in through all one's chinks, and brought in with it, whether one wanted them or not, enormous feelings—feelings one couldn't manage, great things about death and time and waste; glorious and devastating things, magnificent and bleak, at once rapture and terror and immense, heart-cleaving longing. She felt small and dreadfully alone. She felt uncovered and defenceless. Instinctively she pulled her wrap closer. With this thing of chiffon she tried to protect herself from the eternities.

"I suppose," whispered Lotty, "Rose's husband seems to you just an ordinary, good-natured, middle-aged man."

Scrap brought her gaze down from the stars and looked at Lotty a moment while she focused her mind again.

"Just a rather red, rather round man," whispered Lotty.

Scrap bowed her head.

"He isn't," whispered Lotty. "Rose sees through all that. That's mere trimmings. She sees what we can't see, because she loves him."

Always love.

Though there’s a pervading theme of love, it shares time with that of acceptance and not being judgmental. There’s also a gentle irony in how many times people, even (perhaps especially) married couples, misunderstand each other, but in the magical setting of San Salvatore it somehow always works out for the best.

Buddy reads in April 2015 & April 2020 <— we loved the serendipity here.

*Some of the differences:Lady Caroline's personality, though world-weary in both the book and the film, seemed much more worldly and edgy in the movie. In the book there's no affair between Lady Caroline and another character's husband; there's the potential for one, but it gets nicely snuffed out before anything ever starts. Or maybe I just assumed there was an affair in the movie? (Dang, I need to go watch it again.) Also, Mr. Briggs' terrible nearsightedness is not in the book, but I thought it was a great addition in the movie.  I think Elizabeth von Arnim would have approved.

Free online at Gutenberg here, but be warned that there are several typos in this version.

Enchanting! Mesmerizing! Ultimately... spellbinding!

How else can one describe the written wonder that is "The Enchanted April," a classic novel written by the incomparable Elizabeth von Arnim in 1922, a novel that still has the ability to capture a reader's senses so fully it becomes an instant, never-to-be-forgotten, lifelong favorite for many readers several decades after being published!

The characters, dialogue, setting and plot within this book are so equally well-developed they weave a mosaic of finely-knit ingredients that create the perfect recipe to formulate a stellar novel. The characters are revealed like paint being chipped from a wall, a bit at a time, unveiling so much of the brewings within their mind and actions you cannot help but be transfixed.

Take for instance this revealing line:

"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!"

A flurry of emotions wanting to break free is evident here. And this is just a minute example of the descriptive reflections portrayed from each character. No one character and their thoughts are left mysterious in this book. There is a sweet, poignant longing to fully live life and love and be loved with all their hearts by the ladies in this book. Their emotions are palpable, splattered on the page for you to revel in with every turn of the page. Whatever the characters were experiencing in their lives and the dreams and hopes they aspired to- I felt it... all of it.

In addition, this quoted line conveys a classic connotation in that it can easily fit into today's society. It is indeed timeless. Anyone of us can feel like this at any time within our lives- longing to be "privately important"- not for the "mechanical" asset we can bring to an organization or platform but what we can bring of our true selves in authentic relationships we keep near and dear to our hearts in humble privacy.

Another line strikes a poignant chord:

"Why couldn't two unhappy people refresh each other on their way through this dusty business of life by a little talk—real, natural talk, about what they felt, what they would have liked, what they still tried to hope?"

The setting was magical, so tangibly alive I could actually feel the soft breeze caress my own cheeks and imagine the scent of flowers and sea that lingered in the air. The vivid scenes permeated my own senses. This descriptive paragraph says it all:

"The ripples of the sea made little gurgling noises at their feet. They screwed up their eyes to be able to look into the blaze of light beyond the shade of their tree. The hot smell from the pine-needles and from the cushions of wild thyme that padded the spaces between the rocks, and sometimes a smell of pure honey from a clump of warm irises up behind them in the sun, puffed across their faces. Very soon Mrs. Wilkins took her shoes and stockings off, and let her feet hang in the water. After watching her a minute Mrs. Arbuthnot did the same. Their happiness was then complete."

My heart was elated... my soul was transported to that beautiful vacation spot skillfully depicted by the author. I felt like I was right there in Italy, in a world teeming with visual beauty, color and a hearty abundance of hope. A world where dreams can turn into reality just by sight and breathing in the air. This is magic skillfully, yet naturally, etched by the author. Words flowed into cinematic scenes that unraveled within the mind. The spot-on extent of this writing perfection is rare. Incomparable.

There is no doubt... I am gushing for I was quite simply and irrevocably... "enchanted."
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5/5