Italy is one of my favorite places and after reading “Return to Valetto” it is clear that Dominic Smith loves it for the same reasons I do: it possesses a lengthy and tumultuous history and in contemporary Italy there is often a tension between the past and present, especially when the less-savory aspects of the past need to be dealt with. This is the second book I’ve read this month that focuses on a nearly abandoned Italian town where inhabitants and visitors are forced to confront the lingering effects of WWII in Fascist Italy. While “Return to Valetto” is a markedly different story than the other it is interesting how these ideas can shape a wide variety of tales. Here, historian Hugh arrives from Michigan to spend a 6 month sabbatical with his grandmother and great aunts in their crumbing Umbrian villa, in a town where only 10 people still live. Almost immediately he learns of a story he never heard, about his family’s efforts to house children during the war, and a resolution to the story of his long-missing grandfather, who left near the end of the war and was never again heard from…until a woman shows up to tell them what happened, and that he left her family a cottage on their property. The story that follows investigates conflict, loss, trauma, and grief spread over a half century. The novel is beautifully written, very poignant, often witty, and gorgeous in descriptions of the land, the food, and the people. There are many unexpected turns in this story and I found it wonderfully resolved. I highly recommend this book, especially to those who love Italy. Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to review this book.

The language and writing is beautiful, but I almost abandoned this title in the beginning. I pushed through Part One, and I am glad that I did. Part Two had me hooked, and I had a hard time putting it down. The characters are well-written and enjoyable and the descriptions of Valetto and the abandoned villages of Italy are fantastic. The ending is tough, though, and left me considering how I would have handled the situation if it had been me.

Dominic Smith is one of my favorite authors from his very first novel. Return to Valetto is Smith at his best, delving into the past with passion, sophistication and characters that leap off the page.

Return to Valetto is the first Dominic Smith I have read. This is a novel filled with possibilities that do not quite fulfill their promise. The characters are interesting but not captivating. I expected more. There is death and a betrayal and more death, but they are not cloaked in mystery. They are simply events. I would have liked this novel more without the romance, which was so predictive and not exactly romantic, but that is perhaps Smith’s intention. For most people, romance is not really about magic, which is the case in this novel it is about commitment and love. Of course most people read for escape, not to experience their own lives.

I did see that many readers loved this novel. I merely liked it. I wanted more. I could see the ending coming from the beginning of the book. I like being surprised, and there were no surprises.

Thank you to thank the publishers, Farrah, Straus, and Giroux, for providing e with this ARC to read and review. These comment are my honest review.

Summer is heading our way and this novel is definitely a beach read: romance, family secrets, grief, and family gatherings. Our novel takes place when an academic returns to Italy to a house he inherited and discovers another woman has been living there for years, since his father had promised their family the home long ago after her grandparents helped him during the war decades earlier. The novel basically evolves around these two characters, their families, and the people in this small village. The novel begins rather slowly, filled with too many descriptions, but then the pace picks up when they plan a huge birthday party for the 100 year old grandmother, and secrets have been revealed, revenges planned, and there's great food at the party, a quick kiss that leads to more kisses (beach reading), and you finish the book wishing you were at this village party.

When I first read the description of the book, I thought it would be interesting to see what happened when someone investigated an abandon town, but the story is more complex then that. There is a story about the recovery from grief, there is another of a romance, there is a story involving a woman, who claims a cottage from the family, that involves the mystery of the missing grandfather, and one of the most fun part is a celebration party of a hundred year old grandmother who has invited people from all over the world to join her and they all show up.
There are so many emotions I had while reading this story that at the end I needed to think about how I would relate how terrific, wonderful and mysterious this story is without telling the story. All I can think is that as the story evolves you become more and more immersed in what is happening and you can't believe what each step reveal to you. Its like a search for buried treasure with both good and bad aspect of the search and at the end its all worth it.

I want to thank Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for this involving story of sisters, family and other mystery.

This was a book I did not want to end...and I lingered in the pages, steeping myself in Valetto. I wanted to have a room in one of the apartments (my pick would to be ensconced with Ida). I found the dying village of Valetto to be the most amazing character of the book... and while the dying of this village is sad, it felt appropriate that it should not be a thriving city.

Hugh heads home to Valetto to allow himself more healing time after the death of a wife he loved, followed by his mother. Painful blows in any life, but as the story unfold we learn of complicated relationships and his return to Valetto makes even more sense.

He finds the unexpected there... mingling with the familiar. He meets Elisa Tomassi, who has come with a letter from his grandfather Aldo Serafino. This letter scratches open the surface of a history that has been untouched for far too long and unraveling this history will help heal Hugh, Elisa, and her mother in the most beautiful way.

This story is beautifully written and the characters are well-developed. There was something that I saw coming but, I believe that it was the exact thing that had to happen in this story. The ending makes me wish for an "After Valetto" and I am now off to find more books by Dominic Smith to read!

I highly recommend!

A huge thank you to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with a copy of this book to read.

Return to Valetto by Dominic Smith takes us to a near abandoned town in Umbria Italy. Hugh Fisher, a historian writes about these towns but this is also a family villa. His mom and her side of the family have been there for generations. Until Elisa arrives with a claim to the cottage. Which then brings to light past secrets. A well written and researched book. The characters were believable and very human. I recommend this for historical fiction readers. Although you may get a craving for Italian food!! Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to review this book.

The more I sit with this book, the more I judge my original rating. A solid 4 was what I would have given this, but after thinking a few days I think this book is best suited at 3.5.

This novel has so much potential to be beautiful. The story of generations, a widowed father, a mystery woman from the past- it’s a tale that could be heart wrenching, beautiful, gripping, etc etc etc. and in moments, it truly is those things and it’s so so good. It’s just inconsistent in its storytelling. Not in a way that detracts from the story but something that is noticeable in retrospect.

A beautiful story. Just a little flat. I would definitely recommend to a casual reader.

This was a very slow read for me and one that I thought about abandoning. I never connected to the characters as much as I wanted to and while the setting was interesting, it wasn't painted in enough detail for me to really get immersed in it.

A metaphorical richly described view of
generations of families and the lingering effects of the memories of wartime.
Hugh Fisher, a child of the Serafino family, is an historical author in the process of researching and writing a book on the vanishing villages of Italy to be titled “Dying: A Social History of Abandoned Italy”.
Invited to visit by Italian universities, he plans to reside in the isolated Umbrian family villa in Loretto with his 4 aunts and grandmother.
He is told that a woman, Elisa, has claimed a cottage on their land, for the help her family gave Aldo,his partisan grandfather.
Hugh is still grieving the death of his wife 5 years past and his daughter Susan
says he is “drifting towards the past not the future”.
Family histories are “full of seismic gaps”.
As grandmother nears her 100th birthday village celebration, the aunts are contesting the claim while memories of a long lost past, ghosts and visceral fears still haunt the edges of the multigenerational family.
The reader feels deeply the landscape of life, tradition, humanity and history revealed.
You can bury yourself in books, research, writing and evade the past, or listen, stand up, share the stories and create a freeing future.

meh. decent histfic, but there wasn’t anything remarkable about it, either. i wish i had connected with the characters & storyline more. :(

A moving novel about an almost abandoned town in Italy, the secrets it holds, and the effect of these secrets on the present inhabitants. Told from the point of view of an Italian American professor who returns to the village where he spent summers as a child to spend his sabbatical in the house he has inherited but who finds that another person has made a claim on it. Untangling the web of relationships that existed during WW II and up to the present provides all the characters with information, some of which they may never have wanted to acknowledge. A fascinating look at the residents' participation in WW II resistance and how the events described in the story have consequences today. I've lived in Italy and think Smith has captured the essence of small-town Italy perfectly. His characters are well-drawn and believable, and his own hesitant movement from still-grieving widower to a man who can again care for others is very touching. The description of the banquet prepared to honor the grandmother's 100th birthday is priceless.

An aging Italian villa teetering on the edge of a cliff is the setting and metaphor for the main character's life as he renews his relationship with his elderly and quirky aunts (all named for flowers) and grandmother, while searching for some closure in his grief over losing a wife, and long ago his mother. Serene and calm in tone, the underlying earthquake threat is a constant threat to keep the pages turning. The civility in the dialog betrays the tension the reader can sense between the lines, with occasional forays into a more fortunate future and lighter tone for the younger generation. A nice read over an Italian dinner or in an overgrown but charming garden with relics scattered about.

I super wanted to like this and many of the ideas in it are really interesting (I've spent a bunch of time online trying to find Valetto but I think it's made-up but it sounds so cool!) but he introduced so many complicate ideas, the book got bogged down and dragged. And I felt it on the most basic level-- the paragraphs were quite long so when I was getting tired and trying to decide if I should go one more paragraph, the answer was always no.

What also annoyed me was the whole story was based on this letter and it was a legal document (the story is more interesting and detailed than this sounds) and yet, the way it was written meant the family could have voided it in a second, so that made the story drag more cause you're like "why are we doing this? Settle and we can move on.," Maybe if the story had focused more on the backstory and less on the legal wrangling....

I got an advance copy from Net Galley with the promise I would give a fair review. I wish I could say it's a 5 star and the best book, but I can't. I liked the story, just wish he had found a more direct way to tell it.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advance reading copy and the opportunity to savor this amazing book. Widower Hugh Fisher is an American academic specializing in vanishing Italian towns, and who has familial ties to the mostly abandoned village of Valetto. He has spent happy times there as a child, in a villa with mildly eccentric aunts, and his grandmother, now about to celebrate her 100th birthday. His return to the villa for both academic and celebratory reasons is skewed by disturbing revelations from Italy's WWII past as well as an unexpectedly charming interloper. The characters, the descriptions of the Umbrian countryside, and the vivid portrayals of the abandoned village and crumbling villa are all wonderful. This was a page-turner I couldn't put down.

My first trip to Italy was in 2001, but it was not until my wife and I traveled to Europe several years later, and spent a week in a small Umbrian cottage outside of Assisi, shopping in local markets and struggling to communicate with residents who were less than familiar with the habits and language of tourists, that I began to fully appreciate how different and appealing life is in Italy's quiet, time-resistant villages.

All of which explains my initial attraction to "Return to Valetto," the latest novel by Australian writer Dominic Smith. But the book delivers so much beyond its romantic setting, so much more than its compelling premise.

In the novel, Historian Hugh Fisher is returning to the crumbling hilltop Umbrian village of Valetto -- which Smith explains is fictional, but drawn from the history, culture and geology of Civita de Bagnoregio in Lazio -- as part of a project to document abandoned and near-abandoned places, but also in the hope of uncovering some of the secrets his family has held for decades. Hugh moves into a villa with his elderly aunts and a his grandmother who is preparing to celebrate her centennial birthday. The cottage on the property where Hugh had planned to stay is, it seems, occupied by a woman whom the aunts describe as an unwanted and unwelcome squatter -- but who turns out to hold the key to some dark family and community secrets,

More than simply another ancient Italian village doomed for either "seismic or social reasons," more than a fictional setting, Valetto is a central character in the book, masterfully rendered by Smith and brimming with intrigue. During World War II, it housed fascist sympathizers alongside families actively supporting the resistance and helping the Allied cause. And while the war has ended more than a half-century before Hugh's return to Valetto, not everyone has forgotten one of the town's darkest episodes -- and not everyone alive has been held to account.

The publisher of "Return to Valetto" flags the book for "fans of Amor Towles, Anthony Doerr, and Jess Walter" -- which I am...a list to which I now add Dominic Smith. In fact, I cannot recall a book that held me in such suspense, and provided such authentic rewards, since Doerr's "All The Light We Cannot See." I am grateful to have been exposed to another modern master, who has produced one of the year's great historical novels.

Unpleasant memories are never easy ones. We often push them away, refusing to face what they might mean. Or we obsess on the memory, keeping it close at hand refusing to see the barricade it presents to moving forward in life.
Hugh Fisher has traveled to Italy to help his family celebrate his grandmother's 100th birthday. He plans to stay in a cottage on his grandmother's estate but learns that someone else has moved into the cottage, claiming ownership.
The interloper brings with her memories of WWII when Hugh's family sheltered refugees from dangerous areas in other parts of Italy. Hugh's family has assumed for all the intervening years that their patriarch, Hugh's grandfather, had abandoned his family during the war. They will learn more about those events from her, as well.
Hugh also carries with him memories of his wife, he has only recently removed his wedding band, five years after her death.
Dominic Smith weaves the many strands of memory carried by all the characters in his book into an engrossing read. As the preparations for the birthday party proceed, memories unfold and long buried tragic secrets are revealed.
Hugh and his family have an understandable desire for confrontation and revenge - a perpetrator of long ago cruelty will be a guest at the party.
The reviewer received an advance reader copy from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. This is a good story but I found the descriptions of the place and people clunky at times. The main character was endearing, however and once I got the other characters straight in my head, I enjoyed spending time with them.

I think that this has the makings of a great book, but I just could never get into it. I found it incredibly slow and overly atmospheric to my liking. I tried skipping ahead to part 2 where others said it picked up, but that was not my experience.

If you love truly atmospheric reads you will likely enjoy this one. The writing was lovely and I bet many will love it.

Thank you so much to the publisher and netgalley for this e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

I will not be leaving reviews outside of netgalley for this one.