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.)
“And a bush nobody had noticed burst into glory and fragrance, and it was a purple lilac bush.”What a delightful story this is. It begins one dreary February afternoon in a women’s club in London, as two strangers are transfixed by a classified in The Times—an ad for a small medieval castle in Italy, available for the entire month of April, complete with sunshine, wisteria, and necessary servants. One lady notices the other reading the ad, and an idea is sparked. (“That was its conception; yet, as in the case of many another, the conceiver was unaware of it at the moment.”) Together they send off an inquiry. Neither of the two is ordinarily the type to rent a small medieval castle, complete with sunshine, wisteria, and necessary servants, with a stranger. Mrs. Lotty Wilkins is the wife of a respectable, well-liked, ambitious young solicitor—but she herself is blotted out in her husband’s shadow, “the kind of person who is not noticed at parties.” She has “the eyes of an imprisoned dog.” Mrs. Rose Arbuthnot has silenced her own unmet yearnings with religion in its saddest form—duty, rules, and guilt—instead of experiencing a freeing relationship with God. Unhappy though she is, she is exceedingly kind, with “the face of a patient and disappointed Madonna.”A reply to their inquiry arrives. It turns out renting a small medieval castle, sunshine, wisteria, and necessary servants for a month is quite pricey—so the ladies place an ad of their own, seeking two more to share the cost. They are joined by Lady Caroline Dester, whose sole desire is to get away from every single person she knows and spend four weeks lying comatose in the sun. Their fourth is Mrs. Fisher, an elderly widow with a house “full of signed photographs of illustrious Victorian dead, all of whom she said she had known when she was little. … She only asked, she said, to be allowed to sit quiet in the sun and remember.” The abundant sunshine of Italy, though, has its own agenda. For as the four women stroll in it, sit in it, and soak it in, it takes to scouring them clean from the inside out. One by one, they experience the power of love—not just romantic love, but the love of friends and family figures as well—to transform hearts and minds and to cover many transgressions. Their souls are given a thorough airing. Their joy is restored.Don’t anticipate a lot of action—there’s exactly one explosion in the entire novel—but do expect the pages to sparkle with clever humor, some keen observations about human nature, and characters and a setting that you’ll probably want to revisit someday. I already do. Such beauty; and she was alive to feel it. Her face was bathed in light. … She had taken off all her goodness and left it behind her like a heap of rain-sodden clothes, and she only felt joy. She was naked of goodness, and rejoicing in being naked. She was stripped, and exulting. … The familiar words of the General Thanksgiving came quite naturally into her mind, and she found herself blessing God for her creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life, but above all for His inestimable Love.Group read with Tadiana, Diane Lynn, Hana, Willow, Hannah, Jaima, and Kim
What do You think about The Enchanted April (2008)?
I started out thinking the book would be a dull but pretty book of description but I was wrong. Then I thought there would have to be some unseemly affair to make the book a romance since the 2 main characters were already married but I was wrong. Then I thought that I would have to sludge through good women being taken advantage of and again I was wrong. I had all the wrong ideas about this book and they caused me to waste all of that time dreading nothing. In the end it was nothing but lovely and for at least a day, today, I feel like life is lovely and I hope I can stay as Lotty as possible. I may not have Portofino to make me into a loving beautiful person but I myself and I can make Lake Villa a big "tub of love" if I choose.
—Genevieve
Bravo, I'm in love with this book, from beginning to end. A new favorite! Predictable, yes, and with dissatisfying male characters, but I could forgive her for almost anything. ****************************************************Lovely lines so far:"[. . .] and they had a prolonged quarrel, if that can be called a quarrel which is conducted with dignified silence on one side and earnest apology on the other, as to whether or no Mrs. Wilkins had intended to suggest that Mr. Wilkins was a villa.""It was just possible that she ought to go straight into the category Hysteria, which was often only the antechamber to Lunacy, but Mrs. Arbuthnot had learned not to hurry people into their final categories, having on more than one occasion discovered with dismay that she had made a mistake; and how difficult it had been to get them out again, and how crushed she had been with the most terrible remorse."And now this, which reminds me of my mother:"For years she had been able to be happy only by forgetting happiness. She wanted to stay like that. She wanted to shut out everything that would remind her of beautiful things, that might set her off again long, desiring . . ."I'll stop now before I put the entire book here.
—Yulia
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.
—Candi
