Seasons of Love

With enthralling characters and a plot worthy of a juicy miniseries, Seasons of Love opens in wartorn Rome in 1944 and moves to present-day America as it chronicles the lives of three generations of women. Poverty-ridden Cecilia, after suffering a violent rape by a crazed American soldier, is offered a new life in America in exchange for perjuring herself. Her daughter Gina, spurned by the man she loves, finds revenge in power and success, while Gina's daughter Scarlett becomes a receptacle for her mother's anger. Eskapa, a British author, transplants her characters from Europe to the East coast with some awkwardness, and readers may find Seasons of Love (published in the U.K. as Blood Relations) a frustrating read. At one point Eskapa has teenagers eating pizza with a fork; at another, she writes: ``Katie's mother decided to strip off and make a spectacle of herself.'' The dialogue is spiked with an overabundance of adverbs, and the passive narration often feels as if it has been plucked from the pages of a textbook. Small problems, to be sure, but they detract from what would otherwise be a thoroughly engaging book. (Jan.)