The best books about falling in love in (and with) Italy

Pick up E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View and cue a Puccini aria. British author Forster wrote a lavishly romantic novel with a transgressive theme. Heroine Lucy Honeychurch struggles against her straitlaced Victorian background until a trip to Florence loosens her inhibitions. Does she marry her fiance, the arrogant Cecil Vyse or the Bohemian socialist George Emerson? Although the ending may be obvious, it is the vicarious trip through early 20th-century Tuscany—complete with a kiss in a field of violets—that is the delight. 

Italy invites forbidden love. In A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway’s 1929 masterpiece, it is between American ambulance driver Frederic Henry and  British nurse Catherine Barkley. Set during World War I, Henry is wounded and sent to a hospital in Milan, where he and Barkley begin a passionate affair. Henry is, again, called back to the front and then deserts to find Catherine. His plan is that they will escape through the Alps to Switzerland, leaving the horror of war behind. I have been to the north of Italy many times, especially Stresa on Lago Maggiore and often imagine Henry and the pregnant Barkley desperately rowing across the lake at night. The description of Frederic rowing in the rain until his hands were raw is quintessential Hemingway—spare, painful, and perfect.

Eric Newby Is one of my favorite travel writers. He worked his way into situations that were bizarre, funny, and sometimes dangerous. His wife, Wanda, was often at his side, the sardonic counterpoint to his irrepressible optimism. Love and War in the Apennines is a memoir of the beginning of their love story. During World War II Newby, an escaped British prisoner of war, was kept alive in the Italian mountains by a courageous group of partisan peasants that included the heroic Wanda. Despite ever-present danger, Newby fell in love with Italy and also with the Italians who risked their lives to save his.

If you’ve watched the recent Netflix series about Tembi Locke and her Sicilian chef husband, you only know half the story. Locke’s memoir, beautifully told, concentrates on (spoiler alert) her healing after her husband’s death. Recently widowed, she traveled to her husband’s tiny Sicilian village to inter his ashes. Although in many ways she dreaded going to Sicily (and her mother-in-law’s house) she is drawn to a simpler way of life from the one she has in Los Angeles. For several succeeding summers she and her daughter return to her husband’s hometown in which little has changed for centuries. Except for the local priest from Africa, they are the only people of color. Locke’s journey is one from despair and exasperation to healing and appreciation.

Rebecca Serle’s One Italian Summer is a heavy dose of romance with a twist of magical realism. Set in Positano, it is another story of a woman who escapes to Italy to heal from a death—this time of her beloved mother. Before Carol’s illness, mother and daughter had planned a trip to Positano on the Amalfi Coast; after Carol’s death, Katy Silver decides to go alone, searching for the Italy that her mother experienced more than thirty years ago. This was an afternoon’s read, a literary side trip to Positano with an unexpected (but strangely satisfying) O’Henry ending.