World Literature, Fiction Subjects

L'America

Name: L'America
Author: Martha McPhee
ISBN: 9780156032360

by Martha McPhee

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Overview

In the brilliant Greek sunshine of a small Aegean island, Beth and Cesare meet—beginning a transformative love affair that spans two continents, two decades, and two lifetimes. Cesare is a privileged Italian boy, raised in a prosperous town where his family has lived for five hundred years; Beth, an ambitious American dreamer born to hippies and raised on a commune. The events of September 11 serve as a catalyst for the unfolding of their story, in which passion struggles against the inexorable force of patria.

The novel of the American in Europe has a long and lustrous pedigree. L’America adds to this lineage, an evocative portrait of the intersection between Europe and America, the old and the new, and the dizzying, life-changing power of first love.

Synopsis

A first kiss, do you remember? Gentle at first, his lips exploring every curve of her neck, then hungry, then greedy. . . . "Tu sei perfetta," Cesare whispered into her ear, and his words became all of her body.

Cesare is a cosseted Italian boy, raised in the weathy town where his family has lived for 500 years. Beth is an ambitious American dreamer, born to hippies and raised on a rural commune. In the brilliant sunshine of a small Greek island they meet - and begin a transforming love affair that spans two continents, two decades, and two lifetimes. As their passion struggles against the pull of culture and country, their story unfolds against the backdrop of a lush Italian landscape and the thrumming streets of New York, catalyzed by the events of September 11th. A sensuous immersion in place, an acute exploration of the divide between old world and new, L'AMERICA is also and above all an evocation of the dizzying, life-changing power of first love.

The novel of an American in Europe has a long and lustrous pedigree: With this dreamily exquisite story Martha McPhee joins the ranks of its most impressive practitioners.

The Washington Post - Caroline Leavitt

… L'America is a heartbreaker of a book about everyday people made extraordinary by love. Sensuous and evocative, it's best summed up in the last line: "ordinary people engaged in ordinary lives that amount to everything."

About the Author, Martha McPhee

Martha McPhee first introduced readers to the charismatic Furey clan in 1997 with her debut novel Bright Angel Time, for which she received a National Endowment for the Arts grant to complete. The NEA s money was well spent -- McPhee s follow-up novel, Gorgeous Lies, garnered a 2002 National Book Award nomination.

Reviews

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Editorials

Caroline Leavitt

Publishers Weekly

A soft clash of civilizations disrupts romance in this rapturous but socially acute fable of cross-class love. Sojourning in Europe, 18-year-old Beth, raised by her hippie father on a Pennsylvania commune, finds her polar opposite in Cesare, handsome scion of a 500-year-old Italian banking dynasty. For the motherless Beth, Cesare represents the allure of rootedness and gracious traditions. For Cesare, straitjacketed by family, class expectations and a prospective banking career he dreads, Beth represents America's wide-open possibilities, headquartered at her father's egalitarian but entrepreneurial commune, a refuge for dreamers of all stripes seeking to reinvent themselves. Besotted as they are with each other, Beth and Cesare find themselves drawn apart-Cesare back to the comforting confines of his hometown, Beth to New York, where her idea of home is a succession of illegal sublets and where she commercializes her love of Italy by writing cookbooks and starting restaurants. McPhee's lush, erotically charged prose evokes their erotic obsession-and the glamorous Old World locales where it blossoms-but, as in her well-received family sagas Bright Angel Time and Gorgeous Lies, McPhee's real subject is the larger forces that shape individual lives and passions. (Apr.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

"The sort of smart, passionate, all-consuming, impossible love affair that is both breathtakingly sensual, shockingly selfish, and, finally, bafflingly cruel."

Library Journal

Beth is the adored only child of a Pennsylvania hippie commune leader who spends his whole life grieving over the death of his young wife when Beth was two. Cesare is the son of an ancient Italian banking family whose 500-year-old history dictates that he follow in the footsteps of 19 generations of bankers. When they fall in love in Greece in the Eighties (he is 24 and she just 18), they don't yet know that they don't stand a chance. Year after year, their love and diametrically opposed fates both nourish and torture them; sacrifices of geography, career ambitions, and familial ties deep-six all efforts at compromise or peaceful acceptance of their irreconcilable differences. Theirs is the sort of smart, passionate, all-consuming, impossible love affair that is both breathtakingly sensual, shockingly selfish, and, finally, bafflingly cruel. In her third novel (after Bright Angel Time and Gorgeous Lies), McPhee draws the reader into the lives of this irresistibly spirited, intensely determined couple even though we know by page 12 that their love is doomed. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 12/05.]-Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

McPhee (Gorgeous Lies, 2002) uses the star-crossed, cross-Atlantic affair of a young American woman and her Italian lover to muse on questions of national character and the power of history in individual lives. Cesare grew up surrounded by wealth and family history in the Italian city where his ancestors have prospered for 500 years. Beth was raised unconventionally, first in a Pennsylvania commune begun by her eccentric father, then in her equally eccentric maternal grandmother's Manhattan apartment. In 1982, Beth and Cesare meet while Beth is traveling in Europe before college. They fall rapturously in love, their passions enhanced by the attraction each feels for the other's culture. Having learned through Cesare to speak, eat and dress Italian, Beth is often mistaken for an Italian later in life. For Cesare, who is in love with America from afar, particularly American literature, Beth is L'America. But Cesare is tied to his family's heritage and to its expectations. Although Beth persuades him to visit her in America while she is studying at NYU, his future is already decided, and he lacks the will-or perhaps the desire-to change course. He recognizes that he is bound to his personal past in ways Beth is not. The more adventurous Beth stays in Italy for long stretches but ultimately cannot give up America and the ambitions she has been raised to pursue. She begins to view Cesare's unwillingness to leave his family as a kind of laziness. Gradually, their relationship sours, then peters out. Each marries someone else, but they still long for each other until Beth dies in the World Trade Center bombing on 9/11. The author's scattershot approach-she eschews a linear plot line-is initiallydistracting, then merely annoying. Ambitious and literate but also off-putting-everyone lives in a rarified atmosphere, the Americans as well as the Italians.