The Red House is a story about trauma and a child’s search to learn about her mother’s experiences during WWII in Mussolini’s Italy. Laura was born in post-WWII Italy to Viola, an Italian woman and her American father. The family eventually moved to New Jersey. Viola was an artist, who frequently painted a red house from different angles, writing on the back, “I will not be here forever.” Since her parents never spoke about the war and Viola never discussed her childhood or her family, Laura has no context to understand why Viola left them. Viola suddenly disappeared thirty years earlier and never came back. When her father dies, Laura finds the red house paintings stored and finds herself wondering, once more, about her mother’s past and what clues it might offer about her disappearance. Her parents had a close, loving marriage. Her mother loved Laura and her sister. Why did she never tell them where she was? Laura spontaneously decides to go to Italy to try to find out more about her mother’s family. She starts at the town where they lived as a family in an apartment near the sea. Little by little Laura finds small hints about her mother, her grandparents and an uncle. She lucks into encounters with people who can give her a lot of information. And with each lead, she travels to another place looking for more.
This novel is told via two timelines, Viola at ages 13 to her late teens. It takes us through her experience of being in the wrong place at the wrong time at such a vulnerable age, going from an very comfortable upper middle class life with close friends and her grandparents living upstairs to a period of extreme deprivation that continues for several years and fundamentally changes her forever. Although Laura is in her forties as she searches for her mother, this is a coming of age story about both Viola and Laura. We learn that each of them suffered from more than one devastating experience that was traumatic and unforgettable. And we learn what carried them forward despite this. It is a fascinating and unputdownable account. I am not one to include spoilers in a review and saying anything more would result in spoilers, but I was really interested to learn about some of Mussolini’s policies that were different from Hitler’s around some issues and also about the post-war intense deprivation experienced by at least Southern Italian families.
I listened to the audio version of the Red House, supremely narrated by Alyssa Bresnahan, complete with accents and good choices regarding voices used. I highly recommend this.
They Called me Bookworm 