Review: ‘Escape to Florence’ is a refreshingly apolitical novel in our hyper-politicized age
Florence, Italy in winter (iStock)Kat Devereaux’s Escape to Florence is a beach read with far more substance than most. In first-person narratives that draw on a great deal of historical and geographical detail, the book chronicles the professional and romantic lives of two women two generations apart, each of whom moves to Florence, Italy, in the wake of emotional abuse from family members.
Tori MacNair, a British writer in her early 30s whose story unfolds in 2019, leaves her overly critical and unloving husband, Duncan, after he hides the details of her beloved grandmother’s funeral arrangements from her. With the money bequeathed to her by that grandmother, she rents a flat in Florence and struggles to stay on deadline with her first book, which is under contract with a British publisher.
Intertwined with Tori’s story is that of Stella Infuriati, a World War II-era, 14-year-old partisan who ran messages for the anti-fascist resistance in the town of Romituzzo. Stella’s older brother, Achille, was a partisan during the war who became a famous and beloved race car driver before meeting an early demise in an accident. The Infuriatis love their son but resent and despise their daughter. Toward Stella, the father is all coldness; meanwhile, the mother is all criticism, making her daughter repeat chores three or four times out of sheer spite.
Tori’s book project delves into the mystery of what happened to Stella after she left Romituzzo for Florence after the war. Escape to Florence establishes and resolves this and other romantic mysteries, as well as a few Shakespearian misunderstandings.
Kat Devereaux’s Escape to Florence is a beach read with far more substance than most.
Devereaux wraps her multigenerational story in a less than truly suspenseful but still satisfying bow. The ending reveals less about Tori’s grandmother than Tori may have been hoping to find, but more about herself than she likely bargained for.
A refreshingly apolitical piece of literature in our hyper-politicized age, Devereaux’s novel stays within the bounds of its own story: the intimate and historical particulars of dual love stories, and the rich Italian backdrop against which both are set.
Although it will (as most romance novels do) appeal more to women than to men, this is a novel for all of us.
Among the universally evocative human topics about which Devereaux offers food for reflection is the importance of intergenerational relationships. Her book reminds us that such relationships are especially valuable insofar as they provide children with historical perspective and self-awareness that they might be unlikely to gain elsewhere.
Until Tori establishes a relationship with Marco, her Italian beau, the person who had known her best and loved her most is her late grandmother, with whom she traveled to Florence as a young girl. In the note that she leaves to Tori, the grandmother explains that the enclosed funds are “for you and you alone.” She wishes that she could grant Tori her freedom (from her husband, it is implied) but knows she cannot.
She is making a bet, however, that the financial windfall might enable Tori to “take [that freedom] for yourself.” Which—in defiance of Tori’s dour husband, her exacting mother and her bossy sister—it does. The relationship that Tori has with her grandmother ends, chronologically, before Escape to Florence begins. Yet this great familial love across generations creates the circumstances for the rest of the young writer’s life to unfold in ways that her contemporaries and near-contemporaries (sibling, parents, peers) would never have condoned, let alone initiated.
The most prophetic and thematically insightful words in the book are spoken by Don Anselmo, an elderly priest who serves as the closest thing to a Christ figure in this mostly secular novel.
Meanwhile, the most prophetic and thematically insightful words in the book are spoken by Don Anselmo, an elderly priest who serves as the closest thing to a Christ figure in this mostly secular novel. He is a member of the anti-fascist resistance who gives his life over to hiding Jewish refugees, arming fellow resistors and serving as a spiritual guide of his community. Don Anselmo tells Stella that “those who truly love and understand you will never insult your good character. And you may disregard those who do.”
Although the priest is ostensibly speaking here in reference to a friend of Stella’s with whom she has had an argument, Stella knows that he is really talking about the parents who neither love nor trust her. Don Anselmo does both, gifting his young protégé with kindness as well as with an accurate perspective on her loveless home.
Devereaux clearly has no political or cultural ax to grind in this book. The quiet counterculturalism of Tori’s investment in the stories and wisdom of a time gone by, as well as her emotional reliance on and investment in her grandmother, inspire in the reader some resistance to the presentism and ageism that plague us today.
Tori has a driving ambition to unravel her grandmother’s story and that of her onetime love, Achille Infuriati. Without it, Tori might have wallowed in grief for the end of her own marriage, and in the self-doubt inflicted upon her by years of unrelenting criticism from her cruel husband. Fortunately, she has an investment in greater sorrows and a broad community of people living and dead. All of this serves to offer Tori the perspective and wisdom necessary to intuit the wisdom that Don Anselmo so eloquently offers to Stella: “Those who truly love and understand you will never insult your good character.”
In our society, same-age peers too often feed on one another’s anxieties and untutored perspectives. Parent-child relationships exist in greater isolation from wider circles of family and community now more than ever. Escape to Florence offers us an opportunity to think about how some of the problems attending age segregation and loneliness might be mitigated by intergenerational interactions and relationships.
True, many grandmothers can’t take their granddaughter to Florence for holidays. And few small towns in 2023 have a village priest who serves as a surrogate parent to emotionally neglected children. Nevertheless, Escape to Florence advocates unapologetically for the nurturing of a self-conception that is accessible only by those who know what they are talking about. In the book, as in life, such people are more likely than not to be on the older side. So for Stella and Tori, the wisdom and perspective gained through interactions with older adults—not Florence per se—constitutes the real escape.
This article also appeared in print, under the headline “Escape to Florence,” in the November 2023, issue.
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