Book Review: Return to Valetto by Dominic Smith

My Rating: 4.5⭐️

“We want history to be a unified narrative, a causal, linear plot that cantilevers across the centuries, but I’ve always pictured it like the filigree of a wrought-iron gate, our unaccountable lives twisting and swooping against a few vertical lines.”

As the story begins, we meet social historian and academic, Hugh Fisher on his way to his late mother's ancestral home in Valetto a (fictional) crumbling town in Umbria. Hugh, a widower, was bequeathed a cottage on the premises of the family villa by his mother Hazel, where he plans to spend the next six months while on sabbatical from his teaching job at a college in Michigan. Once a thriving town of population three thousand, the post-war years and natural calamities ( such as the earthquake of 1971) resulted in a large-scale exodus of families and at present boasts of a population of ten full-time residents among whom are Hugh’s aunts – the Serafino widows -Violet, Rose, and Iris-and their mother, Hugh’s Nonna Ida who is planning a huge celebration for her hundredth birthday, inviting friends family from all across the world to join in the celebrations.

However, he was informed by his aunts that a northerner by the name of Elissa Tomassi has laid claim to the cottage based on a letter gifting the same to her family written by his maternal grandfather Aldo Serafino. Aldo who was helping the partisan resistance, had left his family to go into hiding in 1944, his fate unknown to his family. It turns out that Elisa’s family has another connection to the Serafinos. Elisa’s mother Alessia was one of the refugees the Serafino family had sheltered during WWII, a part of the family history of which Hugh was unaware. Alessia and Hazel had been friends during that period and Alessia had also been close to Ada. While the family and Elisa try to resolve the conflict over the ownership of the cottage, Hugh and Elise uncover much about the history of the crumbling town, the residents and family history including a betrayal and a particularly traumatic incident that impacted both families across generations. As the narrative progresses it is up to Hugh to decide whether to let go of past injustices or see that those responsible for inflicting pain on his family are finally held accountable.

With a cast of interesting characters, vivid imagery and an engaging narrative, Return to Valetto by Dominic Smith is a beautifully written, captivating novel. The author masterfully weaves the history of a town and its people, the customs, food and culture of the community into a rich and absorbing narrative. I enjoyed getting to know the characters, especially Hugh’s aunts. The romantic relationship track felt a tad forced and wasn’t quite necessary, but this did not detract from my overall experience with this novel. The story is presented from Hugh’s first-person PoV and overall, I did like how the plot is structured. Though the story takes a while to take off (around the twenty percent mark), the story progressed at an even pace thereafter and I found this novel hard to put down. This is my first time reading a novel by this author and I am sure it won’t be my last.

Many thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for the DRC of this novel. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

I paired my reading with the audio narration by the immensely talented Edoardo Ballerini who does an excellent job transporting the reader to Valetto, making the setting and the story come alive. Many thanks to Macmillan Audio for the ALC.