The lapping waters of the canals of Venice transport readers to 1920s Italy in this quiet, richly atmospheric novel by Rivière (Kate Caterina
, etc.). In the aftermath of WWI, British diplomat Hugh Thurne arrives in Venice fresh from the armistice talks. Old family friends Giacomo and Valentina Venier open their crumbling palazzo to him, and soon the lanky man whom friends call "the heron" is involved in a number of romantic dramas that distract him from the cares of war and from his marital troubles brewing back in England. He revels in an affair with passionate Emanuela, an opera singer, but life becomes more complicated when his best friend's widow, Violet, arrives in Venice having lost her husband in the fighting. And soon Hugh's long respite watching the shadows reflected upon the waters of the Grand Canal ends with a heartbreaking journey to the graveyards of San Michele to bury yet another of his dearest friends. Rivière's flair for transposing the finest nuances of gesture and mood to the page lends his novels an extra layer of texture, and here he successfully captures the now-vanished habits of a decaying city. Played in a decidedly minor key, this is a lovely rhapsody of Venice and a stirring philosophical examination of war and its aftermath. Agent, Fletcher & Parry. (Mar.)
