cover image Silvana

Silvana

Meg Berenson. Signet Book, $5.99 (368pp) ISBN 978-0-451-18148-0

The author of Interior Design starts with an interesting premise: a Jewish Italian woman is forced to leave her home in Rome during World War II. But this romance soon disappoints as shoddy research pairs with awkward writing. Silvana Levi was known as girasole, or sunflower, in her youth because of her sunny disposition and blonde beauty--in contrast with her family's ""stubby, chubby limbs and hair dark as morning espresso."" The young woman is seduced by her stepfather, is expelled by her mother, falls in love with a partisan and finally leaves for the United States with their daughter. In New York, she opens a restaurant and becomes famous for her Italian Jewish specialties but suffers mightily through a bad marriage before finally meeting her true love at an advanced age. But there are distracting errors in Italian language and culture, especially her mother's consistent references to Silvana as blonda rather than bionda. In addition, the culinary information is often inaccurate. Even rudimentary knowledge of Jewish dietary rules should make one wonder about Silvana's complaint that she can't get Italian prosciutto in the U.S. (June) Despite an exotic island setting and the atmospheric backdrops of second sight and secret murder, Landis fails to develop believable characters who might save an improbable plot. As the novel opens in 19th-century New Orleans, Celine Winters escapes a murder charge by switching places with an unhappy fiancee and marrying the drunken Cord Moreau. After accompanying him to his dilapidated sugar plantation in the West Indies, Celine alienates the fearful natives and disgusts Cord with her ability to read people's minds through touch. But when Celine is kidnapped and found barely alive, Cord decides he loves her. Improbably, then, Cord allows Celine to be taken away for trial and execution when a villain accuses her of murder. In one more inexplicable shift of mood, Cord realizes his error and enlists the aid of his long-lost pirate father, who happens to be sailing by. The convoluted denouement ends in a ludicrous, last-minute revelation. This is a disappointing outing from the usually reliable Landis. (June)