Hugh is an American historian visiting the all-but-abandoned town of Valetto, Italy. It was the childhood home of his deceased mother and is still the home of his grandmother and her three remaining daughters. The grandmother is about to celebrate her 100th birthday. In addition to planning a huge party, the family has to contend with a woman, Elissa, who claims ownership of one of the family’s houses.

The relationship between Hugh and Elissa was so predictable that I kept hoping that the author would do something unexpected with the story. I did not foresee what the big secret stemming from WWII would be. The book was pleasant, short and held my interest, much like the other book that I read by this author. One thing about his writing style that got in my nerves was his excessive description of irrelevant details. For example, describing Hugh’s daughter getting off of a plane: “honey-brown hair in a braid, day pack over one shoulder, Guatemalan-print laptop case under one arm, stainless steel water canteen in hand, noise-canceling headphones around her neck.” Too much. 3.5 stars

If you listen to the audiobook I recommend listening to the discussion between the narrator and the author that comes after the end of the book. It contains interesting information about each of the men.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

A true family saga. I love that the storyline ties events that happen during WWII and the present in a deep way. The two main characters Hugh and Elise. Hugh has fond memories of summers with his family in Valetto. With the passing of his mother, he believed that the family villa would be his. A forward woman, Elise, has come to town and claims the villa was promised to her family as the dying wish of Hugh’s grandfather. Family drama and pain are revisited and the hope of a way forward (in Hugh’s mind) that brings closure to everyone and redemption where it is needed. Loved the story, loved feeling part of this village and the characters are so relatable.

I had to look on a map to double-check that Valetto wasn't a real place because of how richly rendered Dominic Smith has drawn it. A truly captivating story of a once small, but flourishing Italian hill town now nearly abandoned after a devastating earthquake, and the families tied to it and each other by decades of history. A vivid setting and deep characters with rich and complicated histories--don't miss this stunning novel.

I LOVED this book. I chose to read it in part because it was not a mystery or a "romance" novel, but I wasn't sure what I was going to get. I read a lot and not often does a "literary book" pull me in as this one did. The narrator is a middle aged professor who goes back to Italy to stay with his aunts while he is on sabbatical and studying lost villages. It is not a book to read quickly because you get pulled into the lives of all the people in the small village and into the painful memories of Italy in World War II. You also cannot read it quickly because you will want to go back again and again to savor the beauty and insight of a simple sentence. Highly recommend this anyone who wants to take the time to read a really good novel. I received this as an arc from NetGalley and am under no pressure for a positive review.

✨ Review ✨ Return to Valetto by Dominic Smith; Narrated by Edoardo Ballerini

"History does not offer us closure. It offers us the inscrutability of the present. It offers us a river of paper, or a digital ocean whorled by so much flotsam."

This historian (that's me!) loved this book about a historian trying to come to terms with the past and present of his family and their hometown Valetto, his grief, and himself. Hugh grew up, spending summers with his Italian family in this very small town on a cliff that's also basically an island, accessible only by a pedestrian bridge. Returning for a six-month sabbatical, he's surprised to find a woman, Elisa Tomassi, has moved into his dead mother's cottage behind a villa where his aging aunts and grandma live.

As the family grapples with Elisa's claim to the cottage, they also have to come to terms with messy parts of their past that have long been hidden -- including the life and death of their patriarch, Aldo (who left during WWII), the partisan children who sheltered at the villa during the war (including Elisa's mom), and traumatic experiences of Hugh's mom and Elisa's mom in the past.

Hugh's area of experience is abandoned (or near abandoned) Italian towns like Valetto. I loved the idea of him becoming a historian by exploring the remains of the homes people left behind after an earthquake in the 1970s. His own research and thinking in this book was really moving in thinking about the power of history and place, family stories and the things we leave behind. I loved how it brought together thinking about places and families as similar. As Hugh and his family are dining in an Etruscan cellar below the villa, he reflects that like Valetto itself, "family histories are porous...and full of seismic gaps." Hugh also reflects on how so much of Valetto is negative space. I loved these ways of thinking about the past and the spaces that surround us.

While this book is definitely slow moving, I found it an absolute delight. The writing was beautiful, and the audio narration was great (though I had to slow it down to slower than I'd normally listen to it.)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: literary fiction
Setting: Valetto, Italy (super small near-abandoned town in Umbria)
Reminds me of: Hello Beautiful for how it's family and character driven
Pub Date: out now!

Read this if you like:
⭕️ character-driven, family drama books
⭕️ very very small town Italy
⭕️ (so much Italian food!)
⭕️ reflections on history and place

Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Macmillan Audio, and #netgalley for advanced copies of this book!

The cover of this book hints at the mystery and atmosphere inside. This is a moody, dense story that propels the reader back through the history of this almost empty hill town in central Italy. An historian of "abandoned" places, Hugh Fisher returns to (fictional) Valetto on a sabbatical of sorts and to help celebrate the 100th birthday of his grandmother, still alive and semi-kicking at the cragged villa with her aging, widowed daughters. Hugh is grieving two deaths, that of his wife (six years past) and mother Hazel (sister to the widows).

Valetto was abandoned after a major earthquake in the 1970s that destroyed houses and caused the evacuation of most of the town. Historian Hugh is fascinated by the "barrage of objects people left behind, a monument to the day and the hour when everything changed", reminiscent of Mt. Vesuvius destroying Pompeii while leaving some remnants intact. The scenery, the aging villa, the stairway to nowhere are described in rich detail.

There's some present day drama (a "squatter" at the villa) that leads Hugh to a deep mystery from the family's past, one that involved his mother during 1944 when fascists held power in Italy. Historian Hugh had no clue about these events, and the horror is hinted at layer by layer until revealed in full. What Hugh, the squatter and the widows do with this information drives the rest of the plot.

Smith's writing provokes the senses. You can see the town, you feel the rain and the chill, you smell the dank mold, you taste the food (there is a long line of chefs in the family. The descriptions of the food, the foraging, preparation, slicing, decorating....amazing). And emotionally, there may have been a few tears towards the end. I was transported to this fictional world, donkey parade, family insignias, magical villa (how did they accommodate 200 guests in what had been described as crumbling ruins?).

My thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the ARC of this book.

Hugh Fisher is a historian of abandonment. He researches and lectures on abandoned towns. He grew up spending summers in his mother’s childhood villa in Valetto, a fictional town in Umbria Italy. Valetto was devastated by earthquakes during World War II, leaving only a small amount of residents there. He takes a sabbatical and returns to do research and to lecture. His 3 aunts and grandmother still live there. His mother has passed away but has left him her part of the Villa, the cottage on the property. Upon arriving he finds there is someone else that has laid claim to the cottage. Elisa Tomassi claims the cottage was left to her family by Hugh’s grandfather Aldo Serafino who left during the war to hide out in the north. He was being sought for being sympathetic to the resistance. Elisa’s family housed him as he continued his work up north, and took care of him when he became sick and finally died. Hugh sets out to find whether Elisa’s claims are true and why his grandfather would do this. Upon doing so, he discovers secrets about something that happened to his mother and Elisa’s mother when they were young.

I felt the book was written well and easy to follow. It gave a brief history of what was happening in the town during the war. The mystery around what happened to his mother and her friend made for the later portion of the book, as well as whether Hugh and the rest of his family are able to find closure. Smith also did a good job of describing how the village was set up as well as it’s surrounding area. I felt that the book was a fast read and one that I had a hard time putting down. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the history around parts of Italy and Europe.

Thank you Net Galley for giving me the opportunity to read this.

So immersive. Valetto is beautiful and fascinating on the page, as are all the characters in this wonderful book that is part historical fiction (WWII and the resistance in Italy) but is at is core a family drama and mystery. I loved learning about abandoned towns in Italy from our first person protagonist, Hugh, an American professor with deep family roots to an abandoned village in Italy. I was hooked as soon as we met Elisa. Great book.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Look for it now in your local and online bookstores and libraries.

⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

Hugh Fisher is a historian who has written a book about the abandoned villages in Italy. Valetto, the place where he spent summers as a child, is one such village. Only ten residents remain in Valetto, including Hugh’s three aunts and his grandmother. On a six month sabbatical from his teaching position, Hugh arrives in Valetto planning to stay in the cottage on the grounds of his family’s medieval villa. However, when he arrives, his family informs him that a woman has taken up residence in the cottage and is claiming that Hugh’s grandfather promised her family the cottage for saving his life during WWII. When other secrets come to light, Hugh is determined to set things right.

This book was wonderfully atmospheric and beautifully written. I felt like I was in this centuries-old town in Italy. It reminded me a little bit of A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. I felt connected to the setting and the characters. Some of the story did fall flat for me, though, which is why I couldn’t give it four stars.

A modern day novel about seeking a promised inheritance in a dying Italian village and instead uncovering long hidden family secrets — what fan of books about World War II and Italy wouldn’t eagerly devour such a story? “Return to Valetto” did not disappoint and, in fact, it provided an even richer reading experience than the typical story with this rather shopworn plot.
First of all, Dominic Smith is a wonderful writer. He crafts sentences and paragraphs that are little gems to be savored. His descriptions of the Umbrian countryside and customs bring the setting to life. It was also a pleasure to see how he wove Italian dialogue into the narrative in such a way that the reader could easily feel they were deciphering it for themselves.
Another strength of the book is the simple decision to make the narrator a man. So many of these confronting-the-past stories are told from a female perspective, it was refreshing to watch Hugh, a widowed college professor, navigate family relationships and his own insecurities.
Of course what earns this book a 5 stars review is the story itself. The hardships of life in Valetto under Nazi occupation during WWII are vividly brought to life by the letters and memories of actual witnesses, and they are revealed in the present at the centennial birthday celebration of the matriarch of the family. It is a glorious party and the description of the feast will have you drooling, but it is what follows the birthday toasts that will stun you. Even with the careful planning by the participants, the story takes an unexpected twist which leads to an even more satisfying conclusion.
I recommend this book not just for its story and characters but for the respect the author has for his readers, providing an experience that offers both pleasure and challenge.

Return to Valetto by Dominic Smith is a lovely historical fiction novel set in the fictional village of Valetto, Umbria, Italy. Apparently Mr. Smith based his town on a place in Italy called Civita Di Bagnoregio. The town of Valetto is just as much a character in this story. The town is described so vividly and has culture and tradition as two of it’s main attributes.

The main character is Hugh Fisher who is an American scholar who has a singular focus, he studies vanishing towns. Valetto is his ancestral home on his mother’s side. Hugh has spent many summers in Valetto as a child in a family villa with adorable eccentric aunts and his grandmother.

Hugh Fisher is a widow with a daughter at college. He has returned to Valetto because there is going to be a celebration for his grandmother who will be turning 100. He is also returning for other reasons. He has taken a sabbatical and plans to study Valetto.
He is still navigating the loss of his wife who was ill and now the more recent loss of his mother. His mother leaves him the cottage which is adjacent to the Villa where his grandmother and his aunts live. Hugh returns to submerse himself into his memories in the cottage that was such an integral portion of his childhood. This trip allows him to investigate Valetto from a scholarly standpoint and allows him to wander into his families past.

During Hugh’s investigations of Valetto he finds some disturbing revelations from a time when Italy was occupied on the wrong side of history during WWII. Hugh arrives in Valetto with his grief, his love of family, his memories and lastly the curiosity of an historian.

The characters are deep, wise, loving, eccentric, arrogant, full of secrets and full of charm. The characters, the descriptions of the Umbrian countryside and the vivid portrayal of the abandoned village and it’s few residents sucked me right in.

I enjoyed every part of this book. This is my first book by Dominc Smith but I can assure you it won’t be my last. Well done. I would like to thank Mr. Smith, Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Return to Valetto won't disappoint fans of Smith's earlier works. It's a gripping story of long held family secrets and historical wrong-doings which unfolds in a steady pace against a backdrop of an almost abandoned Italian village. Perhaps the author could have fleshed out the characters a little more although the descriptions of the medieval villa and village are terrific. There's a memorable denouncement scene during the Aunts' feast which will stay with the reader. Return to Valetto has plenty of charm and enough grit to satisfy.

Like some of the other reviewers, the first part of the book was slow going and I almost put it down. Unlike the others, the pace never really picked up. None of the characters were memorable. In fact, there was no feeling good or bad about any of them. The writing was okay. The interspersing of Italian phases did not bother me. I do not speak Italian but do Portuguese and Spanish which helped.

Thank you, NetGalley, for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

The perfect balance of cozy but with touching on serious topics, of new-to-me topics but with adventure, and of a satisfying ending but not in a way that felt too cliche.

A great read that has the ease of summer but doesn't feel like it's leaning too hard into novelty to get there.

Family Loyalty and Fascinating Secrets
 
Every book I have read about Italy focuses on the beauty of the landscape, the small villages and the elegant, emotional people.
 
Return to Valetto is a story about Hugh Fisher, an historian, who is a grieving his wife, Clare, who died six years ago.  He has a daughter, Susan, who wants her father to move on.  She is studying for a PhD in economics at Oxford University.
 
Hugh cannot move on in the beginning of the book.  He is mourning his wife and wants to return to a village in Umbria for the 100th birthday of his Grandmother Ida Serfafino.  Hugh’s aunts, all widowed, still live in the villa.  They are respectively Violet, Rose and Iris, all named for flowers.  The sisters reminded me of an excellent British sitcom (BBC) , “Keeping Up Appearances,” where the plots were often focused on Hyacinth and her sisters, named after flowers.
 
This pleasant and interesting novel involves a “squatter,” who claims the family cottage belongs to her. Hugh is the narrator of this story.  He uncovers the history and begins a relationship with the “squatter” Elisa Tomassi.  It is an
interesting plot, including the emergence of Fascism and old, buried secrets.
 
More than a good story.

My gratitude to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux. All opinions expressed are my own.

I really enjoyed Dominic Smith's new book, "Return to Valetto"; it swept me up from the beginning and kept me engrossed straight through to the dramatic end. The novel is set in Valetto, a crumblingly picturesque Italian town where "you turn a corner and see the curled Cs of a dozen sleeping cats in the piazza, the clay-potted geraniums on the edges of stone stairs, the winter rooftop gardens, or the old man in a leather apron walking to the church every hour to ring the bronze bells, and you feel certain that this town of ten will be here forever." Narrator and history professor Hugh Fisher, in fact, specializes in these shrinking Italian towns, and has returned to his deceased mother Hazel's ancestral home on a six-month sabbatical to continue his research and try to move on from his beloved wife's death six years earlier. But intrigue awaits Hugh in Valetto: A mysterious woman, Elisa Tomassi, has installed herself in the stone cottage Hugh's mother had left him, claiming that Hugh's grandfather Aldo Serafino, a partisan sympathizer who went into hiding during World War II and was never heard from again, had gifted it to her family in gratitude for their sanctuary during the war. In trying to unravel the mystery of the cottage's ownership, Hugh discovers a long-buried wartime trauma that scarred both Hazel's life and that of Elisa's mother Alessia. Along the way, he also mediates between his three eccentric and warring aunts as they plan his grandmother's 100th birthday bash, and entertains the unexpected possibility of finding love again.

I inhaled this book over a weekend, but it's worth noting that this isn't just cozy historical fiction--the secret that Hazel and Alessia had kept between them for so many years made me literally gasp aloud as I read it. Readers who are prepared for that, however, will be rewarded with a well plotted and fully realized novel that builds to a memorable climax. I will be gifting many copies of this one to friends and suggesting it for my book group.

Many thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with an ARC of this title in return for my honest review.

Return to Valetto was a virtual vacation to one of my favorite places in the world: Umbria, Italy. Hugh Fisher is mourning the double loss of his wife and then his Italian mother when he returns to Valetto to claim his inheritance. The only hitch is Elisa Tomassi, an award winning chef from Milan, is squatting in the cottage where young Hugh had spent happy summers with his enigmatic mother. His grandfather joined the resistance and disappeared during World War II, leaving ambiguities about his crumbling estate. To resolve their competing claims on the small cottage, Hugh and Elisa must convince their elderly relatives to share their traumatic secrets, all while consuming copious amounts of hand rolled pasta, foraged fungus, grated cheese, and of course, vino rosso.

I brought Return to Valetto to an island cottage near my home in Maine, and it was exactly the right type of vacation reading: an engrossing story with moral ambiguities in a lovely setting with a touch of romance. Although the author is a man, the strongest characters are women who steer the narrative. The history professor protagonist is just along for a ride, literally letting everyone else drive him around and feed him like a child, until the atrocities of the past prod him out of his lethargy. Loyal Hugh is a sympathetic character, but his lack of engagement and agency is tiring to the other characters and to the reader. That was my only criticism of this otherwise well crafted tale about how much the past can overshadow the present.

The best character of all was the crumbling village itself. The vivid description of a stairway left dangling into a ravine after an earthquake destroyed half the town was so convincing that I was surprised to discover that Valetto didn't exist beyond the pages of this novel. The author is Australian American and not Italian, but Dominic Smith seems to have done his research well. Return to Valetto tasted like the wild truffles of Umbria at a fraction of the cost.

This review was my goodreads post. Visit my blog for a longer review, including my photos of Italy and the seaside cottage in Maine, where I read the galley. I also tweeted the link and shared on facebook publically.

A wonderful book, if you love Italy, you will especially love this one. The characters willstick with you for a long time.

Atmospheric, wonderfully wrought RETURN TO VALETTO by Dominic Smith transported me to a small village in Italy, full of history's secrets, love and betrayal, courage and conviction. Past and present collide when the current claim on a family cottage is challenged by a woman claiming it was given to her family--as the owner attempts to figure out the complexities of relationships and terrible decisions made under excruciating pressure, the story is a propulsive, enjoyable, wild ride. Well-written with unforgettable scenes and heartbreaking revelations, Smith's book is one I will long remember.

Return to Valetto tells a story about family and how it's connections, disconnections, unanswered questions. Here, we have the story of Hugh Fisher, arriving at the home of his aunts in Valetto, Italy while on sabbatical from his position in the United States. Upon arrival, he is immediately confronted with an issue regarding a villa on his aunts' estate that he inherited through his mother and immersed in the legal battle over it initiated by his aunts. Given that the villa involved is Hugh's inheritance and his aunts are elderly, he is put in charge of collecting evidence to win the case. It's while searching for this evidence, which includes speaking/interacting the so-called squatter, the issue with his villa, that we find the real story in this book. We learn many things - many lessons - and that things aren't what they seem. We learn why certain things are the way they are. We learn that sometimes the answers we assume to be are not the answers at all.

Road to Valetto is a compelling story of a family - a family that seems set in its ways; a story of a man stuck in his past that finds healing which brings healing and change when the most unexpected takes place. A very inspiring read to say the least!