The New York Times
Craig's secret weapon is charm, a quality so rarely found in American fiction that it makes her books nearly as exotic as a new bildungsroman from Bali or Madagascar. — Laura Miller
The New Yorker
Ellen, a glamorous handbag designer, loves Daniel, a humble, though moneyed, academic; despises his film-critic friend, Ivo; despairs of Meenu and Polly, her old London flatmates who have let themselves go to seed, the latter married to Daniel’s half brother Theo, who has eyes only for his work. Or does he? In the best tradition of summertime romps, when the friends gather for a vacation in Tuscany backbiting and bed swapping almost immediately ensue. The author’s template for her beguiling, very funny fantasia is “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” with the main players complemented by a tribe of fairies—here a trio of children who provide their own little frissons. Craig writes with charm and wit, and what in other hands might feel tipsy and overblown remains in the region of delight.
Publishers Weekly
In this lighthearted romp, Craig's second novel to be published in the U.S. (after In a Dark Wood), Theo, a successful American businessman residing in London with his wife, Polly, and their son and daughter, Robbie and Tania, rent a house in Tuscany for a two-week vacation. With match-making intentions, they invite seven friends, including an Indian-British divorc e, Hemani, with a young son, Bron; former model Ellen; three eligible bachelors; and, most formidable of all, Theo's starchy mother. At the end of the first week, Polly is doing all the work, her relationship with Theo is crumbling, the hoped-for romances are not materializing and the three youngsters are fighting with one another. Only the owner of the house, a "W. Shade," is absent. The vacation appears to be a failure, but something of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream haunts the lush forest nearby, especially when Tania, with the advice of sparkle-sized fairy folk, prepares and administers a potion to the adults. The romantic entanglements that ensue might flummox even Shakespeare; one is not between a previously argumentative couple at all, but between two men, one of whom is Theo. Craig is perhaps too leisurely about introducing the quasi-fantasy element, but it works, and when the mysterious W. Shade finally arrives, he is in for a romantic surprise of his own. This is amusing, featherweight stuff, and readers who love to see posh vacationers gamboling about in Italy will eat it up. (July 22) Forecast: Readers who enjoyed In a Dark Wood will recognize the fairy tale overtones here, but Love in Idleness is a much frothier confection and should win Craig a throng of beach-going readers. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
A Midsummer Night's Dream is the basis of this amusing and intelligent novel. When eight adults and three children vacation together in a rented Italian villa, the children discover fairies, and the adults discover truths about themselves as they reunite with old lovers or find themselves changed and ready for new relationships. Character names and descriptions recall the denizens of Shakespeare's comedy: one comical character has big brown eyes, funny tufted ears, and a braying laugh. Using some British characters, some American, and one British Indian, Craig incorporates insights about cultural misconceptions that sharpen and update Shakespeare's comedy of manners. Several of the characters reappear from her earlier novel, In a Dark Wood, and that, combined with references to P.G. Wodehouse, E.M. Forster, and others, gives the reader the sense that there are layers of meaning to be discovered that will repay careful reading. In the end, though, this is a delightful summer read on its own. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.-Kim Uden Rutter, Lake Villa Dist. Lib., IL Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
School Library Journal
Adult/High School-When a group of American and English friends gather at a house in Tuscany for a two-week vacation, they find more than they bargained for. A sophisticated bunch, they are modern royalty of a sort-celebrities in their fields-but they can't seem to jell as a group, and matchmaking efforts fail, too. Married or single, they are all out of step. The three children-two boys and a girl-squabble like any youngsters, but when, in brief but lovely passages, the author reveals something of their consciousness, they become a link to an underlying magic. Running wild in the countryside, they find fairies who give the girl recipes for potions. The children use them to induce the adults to love the right people, but of course these plans go awry. On Midsummer Night, mysterious forces conspire to draw everyone into the woods and keep them all there. Or did they just get lost? Was this really magic, or just the effervescence of discovering life's possibilities in a new setting? This is a bright, amusing story, and for readers who have already succumbed to the charm of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, it will be a special treat. Craig evokes the fey qualities of the well-loved play with many references to characters and situations, and she captures to perfection the quality of a midsummer enchantment.-Christine C. Menefee, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Plato’s Symposium, and any number of Iris Murdoch novels are blithely conflated in this intricate romance. The actions occur at and around Casa Luna, the Italian villa rented for a summer holiday by American (though London-based) attorney Theo Noble and his wife Polly. Besides their children Tania and Robbie, the vacationers include Theo’s brother, university lecturer and amateur cellist Daniel, and the latter’s improbable friend, venomous film critic Ivo Sponge; the Nobles’ women friends Ellen von Berg (who’s smitten with Daniel) and Indian divorcée Hemani Moulik, with Hemani’s exotic son "Bron" (Auberon) trailing along; Theo’s rich gorgon mother Betty; and, eventually, black-sheep relative Guy Weaver, host of a TV gardening show. British author Craig (In a Dark Wood, 2002, etc.) mixes and matches them energetically, echoing Midsummer’s actions and revealing (sometimes inexact or overlapping) correspondences between her characters and Shakespeare’s: Theo and Polly are regal Theseus and Hippolyta; Ellen and Hermia, lovestruck maidens Helena and Hermia; Tania, Robbie, and Bron the fairy monarchs Titania and Oberon and the "Indian boy" over whom they quarrel; Guy, of the "braying laugh," is "rude mechanical" Nick Bottom; and Ivo (who "enjoy[s] playing the trickster and the villain") is both mischievous Puck and the ardent sexual rival of Daniel (Lysander?). (Betty, oddly, seems to have dropped in from The Tempest or, perhaps, Titus Andronicus). There’s much talk about what love is and isn’t, direct Shakespearean quotation, misadventures in a nearby forest, and several climactic pairings, including one deliciously mordant surprise. Craig knowsMidsummer well, but often bludgeons us with needlessly explicit connections (e.g., declarations that the children "were so beautiful, . . . they did not seem quite human" or that "They’re a force of nature"). Engaging, intermittently ponderous literary horseplay. Shakespeare did it better. Agent: Giles Gordon/Curtis Brown UK
