Published: 06/13/23

Thank you NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for accepting my request to read and review Return to Valetto.

Not for me. At one point I thought another time, another mood, another season maybe the outcome would be different. But, the truth is this doesn't work for me, and I shouldn't have to work for it.

The premise and the cover reeled me in, however, once on the hook I got off. The story was slow moving. There were characters that seemed to come and go. I was lost.

There is an audience for this writing. This is another book I wish was part of a book club.

2.5 stars, rounding up to 3 for the history.

About twenty-five hundred ghost towns dot the landscape in Italy, abandoned and forsaken for one reason or another.

Hugh Fisher’s wife died of cancer six years ago and his life has been running nearly as empty and neglected as these towns he now studies and analyzes in his cold scholarly works.

Valetto is one of those nearly abandoned places. A devastating earthquake in 1971 drove everyone out but Hugh’s grandmother and three quirky aunts. Hugh is visiting from America to celebrate his grandmother’s 100th birthday and to settle a legal issue his family is having with a property claim. A woman, Elisa Tomassi, has arrived with a letter from Hugh’s long-deceased grandfather. The letter seems to will a cottage on the estate to Elisa’s family.

This is a ghost story. The ghosts are not of the Vincent Price or John Carpenter scope, but of the memories of loss. There are the physical structures whispering of lives in the past. There are survivors’ sharp, ingrained pains of regret. Above all, an ancient villain was never brought to justice and his crime effectively crushed the spirits of his victims. How to deal with the long ago…

The past is never dead. It's not even past. – Faulkner

Dominic Smith has captured a shot of Italy from its World War II aftermath to now. The rebuilding of Hugh’s character is a little less satisfying with a romantic relationship which seemed a bit contrived. The outer world, though– the cobwebs and echoes of lives uprooted– is very much worth the trip.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and to NetGalley for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. #ReturnToValetto #NetGalley

Any book set in Italy begs me to read. I think the Italian countryside is sublime and Dominic Smith does a terrific job of integrating the story with the surroundings. I tend to judge a book mostly on the characters and whether or not they stay with me after I’m finished reading. That is the case here…..great story, memorable characters and a feeling that the reader is right there in Italy perched on Hugh’s shoulder. I highly recommend. Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read it ahead of the publication date.

4.5★
“The Fiat gave out little adenoidal shunting noises whenever we climbed a hill, and Milo patted the side of his door with tender encouragement. There was no rearview mirror, but a laminated portrait of the Madonna had been glued to the sun-bleached dash for our navigation and protection.”

Welcome back to Valetto, the site of an ancient Etruscan village built not on bedrock but on volcanic tufa, which is crumbling away so badly that the only way to get to the village is across a footbridge. People leave their cars (or tour buses) at the end of the footbridge and walk from there.

“The Saint’s Staircase hangs down from the cliffs of Valetto, spiraling into thin air. It’s all that remains of the house in Umbria where a disciple of St. Francis of Assisi lived until 1695, when a massive earthquake cleaved a third of the town into the canyons below.”

When Hugh Fisher, the narrator, was a boy, he was terrified on the staircase by a dark, ominous figure coming towards him. He knows that the thick fog that sweeps through the valley into which the staircase hangs was probably reflecting his own shadow back at him, but the memory still haunts him.

Many houses are abandoned, but there are still some very old residents, including Hugh’s late mother’s family. She was a difficult, troubled woman who raised Hugh in Michigan in the US, a far cry from the Italian countryside. He doesn’t miss her.

The woman he grieves for is his wife, Clare, who died six years ago. He seems unable to get over her death. His adult daughter, Susan, now teases him about the women who eye him with interest at the university where he’s an historian. He’s uninterested.

He explains to someone in Valetto why he’s there for an extended stay.

“‘I didn’t realize it when I asked for the sabbatical, but I also came back to Valetto looking for some trace of who I used to be. As a boy.
. . .

So happy. At least that’s how I remember it. I’d leave my parents fighting in the suburbs of the Midwest and I’d come here to be with my crazy aunts and my fearless grandmother in a medieval villa. They treated me like a prince. I lived in the cottage by myself, ate mortadella sandwiches over the sink, . . . exploring the valley and playing chess with old men in the piazza. The happiest I’ve ever been.’”

His mother’s three sisters, the colourful old Serafino aunts and their 99-year-old mother, Ida, live in the crumbling villa in separate apartments. The equally crumbling cottage is still there, which is where Hugh plans to work.

Nothing is simple. The author takes us back to World War Two, the fascists, the partisans, and the children sent to Valetto to hide from the war when Hugh’s mother was a child. She and one of the girls, Alessia, became close friends, and something mysterious happened to them all those decades ago, but nobody has ever learned what.

“I didn’t know what [had been done] to my mother or to Alessia, but I knew, from my mother’s words, from her tone, that it was the kind of harm that cuts a human life in two, separates it into the ‘before’ and ‘after.’”

Alessia’s daughter, a chef, has come to Valetto and set herself up in the cottage, saying she has inherited it. How and why? Grandmother Ida had taught the child Alessia to cook, and Alessia taught her daughter. That doesn’t explain an ‘inheritance’.

I had just seen a short documentary about the old deserted Italian towns like this where people are enticed with a price of One Euro to buy a home! The author talks about these villages, the homes abandoned with places still set at the table (as they showed in the documentary), the people’s history, their wartime challenges with little food, and the fracture in the community between the fascist sympathisers and the partisans.

“So many of the vanishing towns I’d visited had experienced a mass exodus after the war. The Italian economic miracle of the 1950s drew people to the cities in waves, but I’ve often wondered if their complicity with two fascist regimes also sent millions looking for a fresh start. There was a hill town in Calabria where the entire population of a thousand left on a single day in May 1945, within a week of the final surrender and many years after the most recent landslide or earthquake.”

The grandmother’s hundredth birthday celebration is something else again. I couldn’t imagine pulling it off as they did in those circumstances, but I did believe those people could have done it.

It’s certainly not a happy-go-lucky read, but it’s very real and feels as if it’s written from someone’s newly-discovered journals. I enjoyed the story and the people who cling to memories and traditions.

Very satisfying and many thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the preview copy from which I’ve quoted. It’s still available on NetGalley until July 31.
https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/boo...

For more information on one-euro houses, see: https://1eurohouses.com/

Elegant and lyrical, both epic and intimate in scope. The prose, narrative distance, and myth-making reminded me of works like THE NAME OF THE ROSE or ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE. I don't think RETURN TO VALETTO landed as strong as those works for me, but it was still a very interesting and beautiful book.

This book has a dreamy quality to it, with its exquisite descriptions of a dying small town in Umbria Italy. Hugh returns to the town, population of 10, to stay with his elderly aunts for the celebration of his grandmother’s 100th birthday. Some confusion occurs in who will be occupying the small cottage out back, as another person appears to also have a claim to the property. Along with Hugh, we learn that the village has had difficulty recovering from the occupation of the Fascists during World War II, with collaborators reporting on their neighbors. During preparations for the party, Hugh learns of the history of what his aunts and grandmother did during the war and its ramifications. And there’s one person still living in the town who must answer for their part during the war. I really enjoyed this novel and recommend it.

This was a beautiful and engrossing read. Hugh Fisher returns to an almost abandoned Umbrian village where his 100yo grandmother and three widowed aunts live. His mother is dead and he’s also lost his wife. There is a deep sense of place and history and there’s a mystery from back in the war when his mother was a child and went missing for three days with another girl. It is a slow build but so well done that it was hard to look away. The characters are well developed and the whole story is well crafted.

This was a good book, a bit slow at times, but you certainly (or I did at least) felt like you were in Italy breathing clean mountain air. Hugh Fisher is Italian by birth but has lived for many years in the USA, he has returned to his birthplace for his grandmother's 100 birthday and to write a lecture he's supposed to give at a school where he teaches. Valetto is a small village, clinging to the top of a cliff, small parts of if falling away over time, it's even smaller now that most of the residents have left, only 10 remain. Hugh had been gifted a cottage when he was younger and intends to stay in it during his visit, except that another person has laid claim to it, stating that it was given to her family by Hugh's grandfather for the care he was provided while hiding from the Nazis during WWII. Hugh is immediately smitten by Elisa, the lady laying claim and indeed a lot of the story involves them getting to know each other, very slowly though. Things that happened during the war, not very nice things, come to the light and even though the events took place some seventy years ago, the residents and friends that have gathered for the birthday party, have not forgotten, nor are they ready to forgive. A good story, it captured my attention and I would recommend. Thanks to #Netgalley and #Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the ARC.

An evocative novel about grief and healing set in a vanishing Italian village
Dominic Smith's novel Return to Valetto is narrated by Hugh Fisher, an author and historian. In the book's opening chapter we learn Hugh's wife died of cancer six years prior, and his mother followed not long afterwards; he's been unable to move on with his life, still mourning these losses. While on a lecture tour in Italy he decides to spend time in his mother's birthplace, Valetto, a tiny village situated on a crumbling plateau in the country's central region. Among the town's 10 remaining residents are his three elderly aunts and his grandmother, who is within weeks of celebrating her 100th birthday. He plans to stay in a cottage behind their villa that he inherited from his mother, but he finds the house has recently been occupied by a squatter. Elisa Tomassi claims Hugh's grandfather (who left his wife and four daughters to join the World War II Italian resistance and was never heard from again) gave her family the cottage to thank them for hiding and protecting him during the waning days of the war. As Hugh seeks to sort out the cottage's true ownership, he and Elisa uncover evidence of a long-ago trauma that impacted each of their families in unexpected ways.

People who read extensively often feel like they can anticipate what direction a novel's plot is likely to take, and I confess I'm guilty of this myself. I was delightfully surprised, therefore, when the book's storyline developed in an unpredictable direction. The revelation of the trauma itself, while pivotal, is brief, and comes earlier in the book than one might assume. The author uses the event to examine complex themes such as how the effects of trauma spread beyond its immediate victims and what actions against the perpetrators, if any, will heal those impacted. In other words, the book's main thrust isn't the revelation of a family secret, it's what one does with the knowledge once that secret is revealed. The theme of abandonment also permeates the narrative, raising empathy for the many damaged characters who appear throughout the novel and hope for their ultimate happiness.

Smith's descriptions of the Italian countryside and the town of Valetto are absolutely sumptuous, and so vivid the setting practically becomes a character in its own right. The lush prose transported me, almost making me feel I was enjoying a vacation in central Italy:

And then we were driving out toward Valetto in early November sunshine. The blacktop curled between straw-colored fields, the farmhouses shuttered and set back amid stone pines and woodpiles, the church spires and bell towers of small towns flip-booking through the bare-limbed trees along the roadway.

This is writing to be savored, with each brilliantly crafted paragraph an ode to central Italy, and the author's love of it apparent on every page.

He is also especially adept at character development. The novel is peppered with secondary characters who make brief appearances, but each one is remarkably three-dimensional. Smith skillfully avoids the trap of distinguishing his creations with quirkiness, instead focusing on penning them as true-to-life as possible; the result is masterful.

My only complaint with the work is that all the beautifully descriptive narration slows the book's pace considerably. It wasn't a slog, exactly; I was never bored or tempted to abandon it, and I did frequently pause to revel in the author's exquisite technique. But I hit the 30% mark wondering if the plot would ever show some movement. The pacing improves about midway through the book, but some readers may need patience to get to that point. It's without doubt worth the effort; I ended up completely enjoying the novel, and I feel that those who persist will likely be glad they did.

Return to Valetto is a marvelous work of literary fiction, and I recommend it for anyone looking for a well-written novel they can relax into. The author's exploration of complex themes makes this one a winner.

Hugh Fisher is a widowed history professor from the Midwest, taking a sabbatical in the Umbrian village of Valetto, the birthplace of his mother and the home of his three eccentric aunts and his grandmother, who is on the cusp of her 100th birthday. Valetto is situated on a hilltop that has been ravaged by recurring earthquakes and landslides, making the town almost uninhabitable.
In the early part of this book, I found Hugh to be as unstable as the town—both have lost their bedrock. His deceased Mother suffered from depression after her husband abandoned the family. Hugh has the same issue since the death of his much loved wife.
After his arrival in Valetto, this story changed. Smith deftly describes the countryside and the atmosphere in this beautiful land, giving the place itself a role in this book. The medieval villa and abandoned town have a story of their own to tell, as Valetto was a hub of resistance during WWII. The reader learns of atrocities committed during the war—not on the battlefield, but in the streets of this small town. The effects of those acts of violence are felt not only by the innocents themselves, but by the second and third generation after them.
This beautifully written book has it all—family issues, historical significance, love, and food. This is my first foray into Dominic Smith’s work. I look forward to reading more of his novels.
My thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an advanced copy of this book. My opinions are my own.

Return to Valetto isn't quite historical fiction - it's set in modern times, but very much about the past. Hugh is an English-Italian professor and widower, staying with his aunts and grandmother in Umbria while he does some research, and learns some shocking news about his family's past. My only complaint is that Hugh wasn't the most interesting character and the book revolved around him - I would have liked a lot more about the interesting women in his family. But the book was interesting, and especially the ties to the past. The scene where they have to plan the dinner party is a highlight of the present.

Return to Valetto draws you in with beautiful writing and transports you to World War II Italy. The characters are dealing with grief, secrets and family trauma. Historical fiction lovers will enjoy this one.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for this ARC.

3.5. An interesting novel that delves into dark pasts and hope for the future. I liked Dominic Smith’s prior novel, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos but this one was rather predictable. The story mainly took part, in an almost abandoned town near Orvieto. I loved the scenic descriptions and felt transported to Italy along with the delicious scents of Italian cuisine. The story reverts back to World War Ii and its impact on the town and families, with many dark sides, tragedy, and secrets. It was slow in parts which I found distracting.

Dominic Smith is the author of the historical novel The Last Painting of Sara de Vos which is set in 17th-century Amsterdam, mid-20th-century New York, and modern Sydney. I recommended this book in our Strong Sense of Place episode about museums. The author is very, very good at world-building and characterization. I felt like I was IN that story with those characters. And it packed a nice emotional punch.

This time, he's exploring the light-infused hills of Umbria in Italy. His fictional village of Valetto has been mostly abandoned. During WWII, it was a seat of the resistance against the Nazis, but now only 10 residents remain, including three sisters called the widows Serafino. Their nephew Hugh is a historian, grieving the deaths of his wife and mother. He's written a well-received book about forgotten villages and towns in Italy, and he describes his work by saying, 'I specialize in abandonment.' He returns to Valetto for a stay in the cottage where he spent childhood summers. It's unclear if he's continuing to run from his life or trying to put it back together.

Then the plot thickens. A lady chef from Milan is squatting in his family's cottage, She claims that HER family was promised the villa by Hugh's grandfather. As the two grapple with this issue, dark secrets from the War are revealed.

One of my favorite story tropes is a long-lost relative returning to their native land and uncovering secrets. I loved this book and recommended it on the 23 June episode of my podcast 'The Library of Lost Time.'

Return to Valetto tells the story of long-buried secrets in a since-abandoned Italian village, and the sense of loyalty, honor, and justice that brings them to the surface.

Each central character has dealt with their grief and grown around it in their own manner, and the author has a very delicate way of revealing those hidden hurts and coping strategies to the reader.

The scene-setting throughout was everything you’d hope for from a story centered around an Italian village, too. There’s plenty of Italian phraseology sprinkled throughout (all smoothly translated), and the descriptions of the piazzas, the villas, and the countryside (not to mention the meals!) were spellbinding.

Ultimately, I enjoyed some of the writing itself, but the storyline just wasn’t quite my cup of tea. It felt a bit forced, a bit stilted, and a bit drawn out — and there just wasn’t much in terms of emotional investment there for me. I’d encourage historical fiction fans to give it a try for themselves, though — I think many will enjoy it!

Valetto, a small, almost abandoned village becomes the centerpiece of this story.

Ida Serafino, who is due to turn 100 in a few weeks, wants a party to celebrate this milestone. Hugh, her grandson and also a historian who focuses on abandoned locations, travels to Valetto for the occasion. However, the cottage where Hugh would normally stay and was gifted to Hugh by his deceased mother, is already occupied. Elisa Tomassi, this strange inhabitant of the cottage, claims that Ida's husband gifted the cottage to Elisa's mother, who is still living,

Over the course of time leading up to Ida's birthday, numerous family secrets are revealed. We meet the Serafino widows, Ida's living daughters who also inhabit Valetto along with their quirky personalities. We learn what happened to Ida's husband when he disappeared during the war, never to return. There is also a deep, dark family secret linked to Elisa's and Hugh's mothers that left me speechless.

This book explores family dynamics, grief, suffering and the impact of family secrets. It also drops you right into the mix of the Serafino family and the cast of characters who are a part of their lives.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Return to Valetto by Dominic Smith

Past and present meld together as Hugh arrives for a six moth sabbatical in his mother’s childhood home only to learn that Elisa has come and occupied the stone villa his mother willed him when she died. With Elisa and Hugh both claiming ownership, WWII history to unearth, and personal history more current history to share…many decades are covered, much is learned, great prosy passages are read, and insight is gained by the characters and the reader.

I found the writing descriptive and evocative. Valetto is a city I would like to visit and as it is fictitious, the closest to it might be Civita di Bagnoregio in Lazio Italy – the city the author used as a prototype. The story had elements of old cinematic movies I watched decades ago with good and evil vying for supremacy and some emerging unscathed while others perished or suffered greatly. I enjoyed meeting Hugh’s relatives and learning more about them, their pasts, and what brought his and Elisa’s families together in the past…and in the present

Hugh, a widower of six years, is still grieving the loss of his wife while trying to find a way forward. His daughter worries about him, stays in touch with him, and by the end of this book I had a feeling that the people he encounters and what he learns will help him move on and not end up like the dying towns he has focused his research and books on.

I believe that many will enjoy this trip to Italy and walking the streets of the past and present. It was a book that I had some trouble getting into because it felt dark and right now I want something a bit lighter.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for the ARC – This is my honest review.

3-4 Stars

There are certain surface parallels between author Dominic Smith and his main character, Hugh. Like Smith, Hugh is an academic, enchanted by the crumbling Italian towns and has traveled to Valetto as part of a research effort. But Hugh has not picked just any Italian town; he comes from a long line of local inhabitants and plans to work on his academic research from the small, Medieval cottage in Valetto that his mom left to him as his inheritance. It was a spot Hugh traveled to during his childhood summers and one that he remembers fondly, so he is looking forward to six months of uninterrupted time to work. Numbered among the ten remaining Valetto inhabitants are Hugh’s three aunts, all named after fauna (Iris, Violet, and Rose), and his grandmother on the precipice of her centennial birthday.

The trip takes an unexpected twist when Hugh arrives only to discover a woman, Elisa, has recently shown up to stake her claim on the cottage and is currently entrenched within. Elisa claims that after her family helped Aldo, Hugh’s grandfather, in World War II, he left the cottage to her family as a thank you. What happened to Aldo has remained a mystery to his widow and daughters, but they know a threat to their family home when they see one. They quickly go to battle against Elisa to prove that her documentation doesn’t withstand scrutiny.

And with that start, Hugh’s quiet interlude in Valetto is clearly going to become something else entirely.

While Hugh may not admit it openly to himself, he is lonely. His wife, Clare, died from cancer, and his daughter, Susan, is a self-sufficient young adult. He jokes at professional conferences, “I specialize in abandonment,” and the abandonment in Hugh’s life is more than the study of forgotten villages.

As Elisa’s sudden appearance in Valetto portends, Hugh is in for an unexpected family mystery. By pairing up with Elisa to solve the issue of inheritance, they discover what happened to his lost grandfather and uncover a tragedy that befell both Elisa’s and Hugh’s mothers that scarred them forever and whose perpetrator is still in their midst.

Return to Valetto begins with the description of “The Saint’s Staircase,” which “hangs down from the cliffs of Valetto, spiraling into thin air.” This wrought iron remnant of a house destroyed by a 1695 earthquake bookends the novel and is a perfect metaphor for what the novel explores. Time moves along, rendering people, places, and memories obsolete but not without leaving a lasting mark of what once was.

Smith’s characters are vibrant, and the story propels itself at just the right pace. My only critique of this otherwise enjoyable novel was the melodrama that played out at and after Hugh’s grandmother’s 100th birthday, though it did provide a balance and closure that the plot called for.

This is the first novel of Smith’s I’ve read, and I’m very interested in checking out more of his past and future works. And I still have my eyes set on my own deserted Italian villa, though this has tided me over for a little!

An abandoned Italian villa and the family that has stayed behind but years later long held family
secrets are exposed. This book is about love, loss and family and a final commitment to justice.

This was a lovely read of a historian who returns to his family’s home in Italy. At the heart of the story is his relationship with his elderly relatives and grandmother. They were colorful and interesting characters, and their family history was riveting and held a quite serious secret regarding actions taken during WWII.

I’ll avoid spoilers of details of the story, but the book kept me interested, and the WWII story was compelling. Along the with satisfying plot, I learned much of Italy’s history, culture, and food.