Restoration: A Novel
In the summer of 1944, in Tuscany, the lives of two women, both with damaging clandestine love affairs behind them, intersect. British-born Alice, whose marriage to Marchese Claudio Orsini palls after the excitement of restoring their rundown country estate, named San Martino, embarks on a long-term affair with a childhood friend, whose comfort she seeks as her young son, Giovanni, dies of meningitis. Claudio, unable to comprehend Alice’s absence from their dying son’s bedside, vanishes, leaving Alice to manage the estate as the German occupying forces approach. Art student Kristin, who falls in love, in Rome, with her married mentor and employer, art expert and restorer Robert Marshall, executes the perfect postaffair artistic revenge, which ultimately takes her to San Martino, which now shelters partisans, escaped Allied prisoners of war, and more. With a backdrop of the ravages of WWII, particularly as they affect the civilian population, Olafsson casts a keen eye on Germany’s wartime acquisition of artistic masterpieces. A beautifully written literary novel of love, betrayal, reconciliation, and art. --Michele Leber