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Early One Morning Kindle Edition
Chiara Ravello is about to flee occupied Rome when she locks eyes with a woman being herded on to a truck with her family. Claiming the woman's son, Daniele, as her own nephew, Chiara demands his return; only as the trucks depart does she realize what she has done. She is twenty-seven, with a sister who needs her constant care, a hazardous journey ahead, and now a child in her charge.
Several decades later, Chiara lives alone in Rome, a self-contained woman working as a translator. Always in the background is the shadow of Daniele, whose absence and the havoc he wrought on Chiara's world haunt her. Then she receives a phone call from a teenager claiming to be his daughter, and Chiara knows it is time to face up to the past.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherLittle, Brown and Company
- Publication dateSeptember 29, 2015
- File size1217 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"A compelling tale about people seeking to define themselves against the tumult of history."―Clare Allfree, Metro (UK)
"Utterly breathtaking." ―Redbook
"Early One Morning isn't just an incandescent novel, but the rarest of reading experiences, offering a view both wrenching and luminous of how love pushes us past what we're capable of, and somehow-impossibly-reclaims us when we're long past saving. Utterly magnificent."―Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife
"Brilliant."―Dannye Romine Powell, Charlotte Observer
"An emotional page-turner that skillfully evokes the terrors of war and the enduring power of love."―Kim Hubbard, People
"A powerful story of sacrifice, despair and ultimately redemption."―Eithne Farry, Express Online (UK)
"A moving assertion of the power of maternal love to overcome unimaginable obstacles."―Lucy Atkins, Sunday Times (UK)
"A heart-wrenching novel about sacrifices we make for family and loved ones, and redemption during one's lifetime."―Christine Mahoney, San Diego Union-Tribune
"Deeply moving."―Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal
"This will appeal to fans of Maggie O'Farrell and lovers of historical, intergenerational, or Italian fiction."―Mara Dabrishus, Library Journal
"A wonderfully moving novel."―Sherryl Connelly, New York Daily News
"Early One Morning heralds the arrival of an exciting new voice in fiction, with a story that is instantly engaging, and characters that effortlessly lift from the page and are rendered so rich and full that they wrap themselves around you and refuse to let go. Beautifully written and emotionally taut, Virginia Baily's Early One Morning is a powerhouse of a debut."―Jason Hewitt, author of The Dynamite Room
"Incredibly sure-footed, a big, generous and absorbing piece of storytelling, fearless, witty and full of flair.... [Baily] masterfully explores themes of identity, belonging and loss."―Samantha Harvey, Guardian (UK)
"Baily subtly tugs at your heartstrings and by the end of her novel you're likely to be as desperate as the women in Daniele's life to discover his fate."―Sophie Donnelly, Express (UK)
"From the broken Jewish ghetto and dusky countryside of occupied Italy during WWII to the bustling Trastevere cafes of Rome in the 1970s, Virginia Baily offers an affecting contemplation of the past, personal identity, and the complexity and diversity of human bonds. Early One Morning is the sort of book you can't put down and then stays with you, like the best of journeys, long after it's finished."―Anne Korkeakivi, author of An Unexpected Guest
"Wonderful.... I was completely inside it from the first pages, just that delicious (rare) feeling of knowing you're in safe hands, this writer isn't going to make a mess of anything, or forfeit your trust or your belief. It managed to be so witty and dry and true.... Vividly intelligent, gripping and moving and alive."―Tessa Hadley, author of Clever Girl
"A powerful and moving novel about a young man parted from his family during the Second World War-and the long shadow the separation casts."―Good Housekeeping (UK)
"A complex exploration of identity, a tribute to love in its many shapes and sizes, Early One Morning shapes beauty from pain while compassionately touching its readers' hearts."―Shelf Awareness
"A real treat; a beautifully written account of the long consequences of war, set in a richly evoked Rome of the 1970s."―Philip Hensher, Guardian (UK)
"A fresh approach to this well-worn period."―Julie McDowall, Independent (UK)
"A powerful tale of the reverberations of one woman's decision to save a child."―Stylist (UK)
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B00S5A6HRC
- Publisher : Little, Brown and Company (September 29, 2015)
- Publication date : September 29, 2015
- Language : English
- File size : 1217 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 381 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,540,160 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #555 in Historical Italian Fiction
- #7,627 in Historical Literary Fiction
- #9,237 in Family Life Fiction (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
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Top reviews from the United States
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They could have expanded the heartache of the war and the characters involved
The characters were not developed and I never got invested in them
When they finally find Danielle nothing more is said
The story ends all too soon and rather abruptly .
Top reviews from other countries
In October 1943, during the German occupation of Rome, Chiara was in the largely Jewish quarter of Rome (the former ghetto) on ome Resistance work. There she witnessed the Jews of the quarter being rounded up for deportation. Among them was a woman who pushes Daniele, her seven year old son, towards her and mutely appealed to her to take care of him. Instinctively, she took the struggling boy, showed the Germans her non-Jewish papers, persuaded them that he was her nephew, and took him home with her.
She became fond of him; but he would have many problems. For the first three years he was an elective mute; then he became a difficult teenager; then he became a drug addict and a thief to pay for his drugs – he stole even from Chiara.
Chiara had a friend, Antonio, who was a priest; and Antonio ordered him to leave, and Daniele went to Ostia. There is no explanation why Daniele did his bidding, either then or later, when Antonio said he would not facilitate his return home, even when Daniele had become clean of drugs. After that Daniele left Ostia and Antonio lost touch with him. Chiara, who did not see Daniele for ten years, missed him terribly, but eventually accepted that she would not see him again and thought he might even be dead.
In 1973, Maria Kelly, a sixteen-year old girl living in Cardiff, saw part of a correspondence between Chiara and Enid in which Daniele was mentioned, and when she asked her mother who Daniele was, Enid told her that Daniele was her biological father: Enid had met him in 1956 in Rome where she had been an au pair nanny, and she had assumed that Daniele was Chiara’s lodger. Maria got in touch with Chiara and said she wanted to stay with her for a couple of weeks, and, in a weak moment, Chiara had agreed.
When Maria arrived in Rome, Chiara side-stepped her enquiries about Daniele, and – another improbability – accepted being diverted into sightseeing and attending language classes. But in the end Chiara does tell her the truth and – yet another improbability – we are not told how Maria responded.
I must not give away the ending.
In the course of the novel, we are given the story of how, the day after Chiara had taken charge of the boy, she, her mentally handicapped and epileptic sister Cecilia and Daniele had left Rome for the home of Chiara’s grandmother in the mountains and of their lives there; how, still during the war, Chiara had left the grandmother’s house to return, with Daniele, to her own house in Rome, leaving Cecilia behind. (We don’t know what made her take that decision.)
Apart from these several improbabilities and unexplained events, there are other drawbacks to this book. As is so often the case nowadays, this a novel which shifts constantly from one period to another. Often it is only after a page or two in a chapter that we learn in what period the chapter is set. There are also long stretches of the book in which the central story quite disappears. To give just two of many examples, there are several pages describing the details of Maria’s journey to Rome; and others about the effects of Chiara being injured in a road accident. All these are very readable, but seem to me to be distractions and to take up a disproportionate amount of space. So just three stars.