Dear Fellow Reader,

I know, I have fallen behind again(!). It seems that I catch up and then fall terribly behind. I have four books that I need to review and that doesn’t count the books that I read on my own.

I am still keeping up my goal to read one non-fiction book a month. But it is now the 18th of June, and I haven’t read a non-fiction book yet this month. In February, I started King: A Life by Jonathan Eig. I was going along enjoying it, and then stopped to catch up on something else I needed to read. I haven’t gone back to it yet. It is a long boo,k so I’m not sure I will be able to finish it this month. But I have been listening to a book entitled The Swedish Art of Aging Exuberantly by Margareta Magnusson. She is the author of The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. I think I will finish that audiobook and then go back to King on July 1.

But let’s look at the first book I have for you today. It is time for the disclaimer – I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.


The Red House by Mary Morris is the story of a woman looking for her mother. Her mother disappeared when she was 12. One minute she was there, and the next minute she was gone and was never found. The family, which consisted of Laura, her younger sister, and her father, never rebounded from the loss. As the book opens, Laura is in her 40s as the book opens and is at loose ends. Her marriage is dull, she has had an affair, but she doesn’t care about him, and she just feels the need to find out about her mother.

Laura’s mother, Viola, was Italian. She met her husband in Italy, where he was stationed during the war. They stayed in Italy after the war for six years. Laura was born in Italy. When they moved back to the States, her mother worked to fit in and didn’t talk about her life in Italy at all. Laura’s family was very loving and happy up until the day Viola disappeared.

Laura is an artist like her mother. She has several images of a red house that her mother had painted. On the back of the paintings are the words (in Italian) “I will not be here forever.” Laura starts her journey in Brindisi and then goes to Puglia in search of her mother’s life.

This book operates on a split screen. Part of it is Laura’s story in the current day, and part is her mother’s story in the 1940s. Laura learns about her mother’s life, which was nothing she would have ever expected. We also learn at the end of the book what happened to Laura’s mother.

This book is not a light, breezy book. It is interesting, it holds your attention, but it is a bit dark. I did enjoy it, and it kept me reading to find out the next thing that happened to Viola. There might be a few times when you want to slap Laura and tell her to get it together. The book is about flawed people who are trying to make it.

I wouldn’t suggest this as your next beach read, but on the right rainy or snowy day, this book would be perfect. Add a blanket and a fire.

Thanks for reading!

The Red House is a painting that Viola painted but her family didn't know why. Written in a dual time, Viola, coming of age in Italy during WWII. Then thirty years later we follow Viola's daughter Laura. When Laura was a young girl, Viola disappears. She just vanishes from the house. No knows what happened to Viola. Laura is now at a crossroad and decides to go to Italy to see if she can find out what happened to her mother.

Once in Italy, she finds clues as to her mother's past and tries to piece it together. There is indeed a Red House but no one would have guessed what had taken place there.

The reader becomes a detective with Laura in seeing where these clues lead. The early life of Viola during WWII is fascinating and hard to understand at the same time. I appreciated having an early copy of the book from NetGalley and recommend this intriguing read.

Laura, now an adult, and 30 years later is trying to find out what happened to her mother, who just left her family with no explanation when Laura was young. Leaving her purse, keys and some paintings she did of a red house, and which on the back had writen in Italian, “I will not be here forever.”
At a cross road in her marriage, Laura decides she would go to Italy where her parents had met after World War ll, and she if she can piece together what had happened to her mother, or maybe even find her .
She meets people who knew her and went to different parts of Italy , on a hunt to find clues, and so the mystery begins and ends.

I have read quite a few books by this author and have enjoyed them very much.
This one was very good.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Doubleday books for a copy of this book.

Is The Red House just a painting or a real place? Why did Laura’s mother disappear? Mary Morris brings the reader on Laura’s journey to discover answers to these and other questions. This is a well written and interesting book - a worthy read.

This novel offers a compelling and unconventional perspective on World War II and the generational impact of trauma. While I appreciated the depth of the story—particularly the nuanced portrayal of a mother-daughter relationship across time—I found the narrative structure somewhat slowed my reading experience. The book devotes substantial attention to each timeline and character, yet frequent shifts in time and narration from chapter to chapter occasionally disrupted the pacing. Though not confusing, these transitions made it more difficult to stay fully immersed. That said, I’m glad I read it. The exploration of post-war family life and its long-lasting emotional complexities is something I haven’t encountered in quite this way before, and it offered a fresh and thought-provoking lens on familiar history.

This is a well crafted historical fiction novel with a unique perspective of generational trauma. The two main characters become developed between alternating timelines and voices. “The Red House” property was so welll illustrated that it also felt like it was another character in the book. It is a meaningful book with many themes, one not to be missed.

Laura’s mother disappeared from her NJ family when Laura was a preteen. No trace of her has ever been found but her absence has haunted her father, sister but mostly herself. The story begins as Laura approaches the age that Viola was when she vanished. Viola provided almost no details about her early life. But Laura knows they all lived in Brindisi, Italy before her family came stateside. This is where Laura goes to uncover the past so that she can determine why a woman would leave her seemingly perfect suburban life and abandon her family. Brindisi is where her mother met her father who was serving with the military during WWII. With little facts, a clue about a red house that appeared in her mother’s paintings and her rudimentary recall of Italian, Laura uncovers a past that is devastating, still wielding power and trauma into the future. Recommended. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher of providing this title.

Thirty years ago, Viola ran some errands on her lunch break from the library, went home to eat a sandwich, and disappeared. Although the local police investigated--initially suspecting her husband--the mystery has not been solved. Now her older daughter, Laura, is determined to learn more about her mother's early life. She returns to Italy, where she was born and where her parents met and married after World War II. Viola was painter, and the subject of many of her paintings was a red house. With help, Laura finds the red house--really a warehouse where Italian Jews were interned during the Holocaust. As Laura pieces together the mystery of her mother's past, she learns more about her own heritage,

Due to the anniversaries of the end of World War II--75th and now 80th--there have been a good many books written about various aspects. Nearly all fascinating, but utterly heartbreaking in their personification of the horrors endured not only by soldiers but also by civilians. Even as the daughter of a WWII vet, I am still amazed by what people went through just a few generations ago, and how few lessons we've learned. This novel was engrossing and Viola such a relatable heroine. It wasn't until I finished reading that I questioned the timeline. I'm not sure when the contemporary portion of the novel was set (a minor detail I somehow missed). #TheRedHouse #NetGalley

I've read numerous fiction books about World War II from various perspectives: German, American, Japanese, etc. The Red House provides another view and shows how war echos through generations.

Laura travels to Italy. Thirty years prior, her mother walked out of the door of their house, never to return. Laura feels that Italy may provide some insight into her missing mother and her life in wartime. She hopes to discover the truth of her mother's life, and hopefully some clues on her disappearance.

Her only real clue to her mother is "The Red House," an image that her mother painted over and over. She must confront the truth of her past and Italy's past to learn more about her mother and herself.

While the story is slow, it's still a fascinating look at family trauma, wartime trauma, and the aftereffects of both. Mary Morris writes the story beautifully, and this is a story that I will be thinking about for years to come.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

As The Red House begins, we meet Laura, a 42 year old woman, who has acted on an impulse, an impulse building since she was 12 years old, and traveled to Italy. Thirty years earlier, her mother, Viola, disappeared from her home, leaving Laura, her younger daughter, and her husband behind. They never heard from their wife and mother again. In The Red House, Mary Morris has created a novel that moves back and forth in time, tracing Viola’s life as a child in wartime Italy, Laura’s experience as Viola’s daughter for twelve years and then her motherless years, then her search in Italy for evidence of Viola’s life and family and any clues about her disappearance.

Viola had always professed to having no family and never discussed her life during the war so Laura’s trip to Italy is a desperate move to go to the place where her parents met after the war, where she was born and lived for the first few years of her life. Her primary focus-to find the red house, the seemingly obsessive subject of so many of her mother’s paintings. To do this, she must fight the demons of her memory and learn of the nature of World War II in Italy. There is much to learn and surprises ahead. None of it is easy.

While this is an interesting story with a very different look at WWII and the carryover of damage over generations, I found the structure of the story slowed my reading down. There are major portions of the book devoted to each time and the mother/daughter duo, but there are also frequent time/narrator changes chapter to chapter within each section. I did not find it confusing but I simply found it slowed me down. I am glad that I read this book as it has an unusual look at the post war family, at least a look with complexities over time and generations that I have never read before.

Rating 3.5* rounded to 3.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an eARC of this book.

It is far easier to leave than to be left

For Laura, a forty-two year old artist who makes her living staging residential homes being put on the market and whose marriage to Patrick is on shaky ground, it was a phone call that triggered everything. The message left was from Charlie Hendricks saying that he'd like to talk and could she give him a call. A seemingly innocuous call, except for the fact that Charlie Hendricks is actually Detective Charlie Hendricks, the police officer charged with investigating her mother VIola's disappearance three decades earlier. One day for no known reason Viola didn't pick Laura up from school as she was supposed to do. At first it seemed like an oversight that would have a logical explanation when Viola returned home, maybe from an appointment that ran late or a miscommunication as to who was to pick Laura up that day, but she never did come home. Laura's father called the police later that night to report the disappearance, but no hint of where she had gone or why surfaced despite the police's efforts. It was a moment which divided Laura's life into "before" and "after", and she has never healed from the loss. Charlie's call spurs Laura to travel to Italy, the country of Viola's birth and the place where Laura's parents met (he was stationed there as a military pilot in the final years of WWII), married and had their two daughters. They moved to New Jersey when Laura's father was discharged and the girls were still very young; Laura has few memories of the town of Brindisi where they lived. But it is to Brindisi that Laura travels in the present, hoping that she can discover more about who her mother was (she had always claimed to be an orphan, and was very vague about her life before her marriage)...and maybe in discovering things about Viola's past Laura will be able to make sense of the artwork her mother left behind and maybe even learn what happened to her all those years ago.
Although The Red House has at its core an unsolved mystery...why would a woman living a seemingly perfect life with a loving, supportive husband and two beautiful little girls, suddenly disappear?...it is more the story of Laura's journey to uncover her mother's unknown past than it is a ture crime-like mystery. Laura is now at the same age as her mother was when she vanished, and that as much as Charlie Hendricks' phone call likely contributes to the need to find out for herself whatever it might be that he wanted to tell her. As Laura travels through Italy, following what clues she can uncover as to the path Viola's life had taken before arriving in Brindisi, she learns things about Viola's and Italy's wartime past, The characters of the two women are well-developed and it is easy for the reader to empathize with them despite their flaws. The vivid descriptions of Italy create a very real sense of place, and author Mary Morris sheds a light on an unknown (to me, at least) aspect of Italian history. With themes of family, loss, abandonment, and love, it is a story that captured my attention from the very start. Readers of authors like Kate Morton, Elena Ferrante and Allegra Goodman should definitely add a copy of The Red House to their TBR pile, as should those who enjoy well-researched historical fiction. My thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for allowing me access to this poignant tale in exchange for my honest review.

The Red House is a family mystery that explores WWII's impact on Italy. Laura's mother, Viola, went missing 30 years ago, and Laura is committed to finding answers. Told in alternating perspectives, Viola's and Laura's, we learn more about Viola, things that Laura never knew. Viola kept her past hidden from her family, and her disappearance leaves her family reeling. They are unsure if she left willingly, if she was the victim of a terrible crime. What Laura soon discovers is that her mother experienced the horrors of WWII in ways she never knew. This story is heavy, but I was enthralled for the first two-thirds. The last third took a turn that didn't work for me, but I still enjoyed the book. I didn't love how the narrative wrapped up, and the ending felt a little stilted because of how it was told.

I will say -- the narration isn't labeled very well, and there were times when I got a little lost about which perspective was happening. In any event, I enjoyed the writing. It was vivid and emotional. I'm conflicted about this one, but ultimately, I hoped for more from the ending.

A different sort of multiple timeline WWII story. Laura's mother Viola disappeared when she was eight, leaving behind a distraught husband and two small girls who didn't understand. Now, Laura feels compelled to seek answers and travels to Italy where she is lucky enough to be spotted by Tomasso, who helps her find the Red House of her mother's paintings. And that's the best part of the novel-Viola's story. She was a teen when her family was sent to the Red House because they were Jewish. Tomasso was there as a guard the day the family arrived and he's immediately taken with Viola. Their romance is only part of the story as there's also Angelo, the Romanian who teaches Viola to paint. It's not a neat and easy tale. Know that adult Laura's sections of the novel might feel overwritten especially when compared to the other timelines of her childhood and Viola's story but the latter two time lines will sweep you up and keep you turning the pages. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. It's a great read.

Laura’s mother, Viola, disappeared 30 years ago. Now Laura has decided to go Italy and see if she can unravel some of her mother’s past.

Laura is a character that I wanted to help. She is just a bit lost and is at loose ends. Her marriage is on the brink and this has led her to make a few decisions. And these decisions lead her on a quest for the truth. She soon discovered more than she ever bargained for.

This is told in 2 different timelines, Laura’s and her mother’s. I enjoyed both. These are woven together nicely to create a tale of secrets and hidden truths.

I have never read this author. I found her writing style to be very blunt. This is just an observation. I enjoyed it more than I expected. The narrator, Alyssa Bresnahan, did a very good job with this style of writing.

Need a family mystery…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today.

I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.

Laura has always been haunted by her mother’s disappearance in 1972. She was twelve when her mother, Viola, took her and her younger sister to school and was never seen again. Thirty years later and restless with her life, Laura travels to the Italian city where she was born, Brindisi, to use the few clues she has about her mother’s life to try and solve at least a few mysteries. Mary Morris’s new novel, The Red House, tells two stories: Laura’s search for answers and the past that tormented Viola.

Viola never talked much about her life before she married Laura’s father, had her daughters, and moved to the United States. But she painted. Many of Viola’s paintings show what Viola called the Red House. She would never say why she was there or how she came to be there. It’s only a chance meeting, decades later, between Laura and an elderly man, that the truth finally starts to come out. Much to Laura’s shock, Viola is Jewish and she, along with her parents and brother, was forced to relocate to an internment camp (closely modeled on Alberobello) along with approximately 200 other Italian, Romanian, and Yugoslav Jews. The Red House was where they were kept, cold and starving and always under threat of death, for years.

The Red House moves back and forth between the early 2000s and the mid-1940s. In the 2000s, Tomasso Bassano recounts as much of Viola’s story as he knew. Tomasso was a reluctant camp guard (to avoid more dangerous duties with the Italian military) who grew enchanted with Viola. He even takes Laura to what’s left of the Red House so that she can see where Viola and her family lived. The chapters set in the 1940s are much more interesting. As troubled as Laura is, her character didn’t hold my attention nearly as much as Viola did. Viola’s life—and the turmoil she must have felt after the war—fascinated me because she is frequently forced to choose between doing what’s best for herself and sharing scant resources to help her family. It’s impossible to come away from those kinds of dilemmas unscathed.

I would’ve rated this book higher than I did but, I have to confess, I was very annoyed by some of the choices Morris made in the conclusions of these two stories. At the risk of spoiling the ending, I feel that the coda that explains what really happened to Viola the day she disappeared ruined the mystery that had surrounded her character throughout the book. Because we get her story via Laura, Tomasso, and others, we never hear Viola speak for herself. I hate to pick on a book for not being what I wanted it to be, but I think an ambiguous ending would’ve been more fitting for all that delicious unknowability.

I was given an advance reading copy (arc) of this book from NetGalley.com in return for a fair review. The Red House tells the historic story of Viola, a young girl who ends up on the wrong side of the Nazi regime. She and her family are placed in a work camp. At the same time, we also hear the modern day story of Laura, Viola's daughter. Laura is a troubled young woman due to her mother's disappearance many years before. She goes on a search looking for answers. I am not a fan of this tpe of dual timeline. I always find the historical story much more interesting and often wish the author would have just stuck with the past. The book did hold my interest, although, I found Laura's story a bit weak. Just don't care for that modern twist. Author Mary Morris did a good job telling these two stories, but the historical tale was much more fascinating. I was a little disappointed in the way the story wrapped up, but I did see it coming. I just wish authors would pick one story and stick with it.

Three decades ago, Laura’s mother, Viola, left the house and never came home. Left behind was her purse, her keys and her mysterious paintings of a red house. Laura needs to find her mother, or at least her mother’s story, so she heads to Italy where her parents met after World War II. Laura finds out Viola’s life was not the story she was told as she slowing starts unwinding the story.

While “The Red House” is historical fiction, it very much read as a true crime memoir. It is reflective, mysterious, and emotional. This is the first book by Mary Morris I don’t want it to be my last.

Thank you NetGalley and Doubleday #TheRedHouse #NetGalley

Five years ago I read Mary Morris's Gateway to the Moon, a novel that I think of often and that I have recommended numerous times. Morris's new novel, The Red House, has had the same effect on me, and I'm sure that I will long remember this story of Laura's 30-year quest to find out what happened, and why, to her mother Viola, originally from Italy and then living in New Jersey, who disappeared suddenly when Laura was 12. Laura's trip to Italy reveals much of Viola's story, a story that is completely unexpected, and a story - and a journey - that helps Laura reveal much about herself. But, I don't want to spoil any of the many surprises The Red House holds for the lucky readers who choose this book, so I shall reveal no more of the story. Written in rather straightforward but lovely prose, The Red House will leave an indelible impression on what I hope will be its many readers.

Laura's mother walked out of their lives when she was an adolescent and something that has haunted her ever since. Now middle-aged, she finally decides to go to Puglia in Italy to look for clues in her mother's past, as she contemplates leaving her husband. Laura's mother, Viola, was almost a teenager when her family was sent to the south of Italy to be incarcerated. The war has been raging for some time and non-Italian Jews are being rounded up. Only her father isn't a native Italian, but the family decides to stay together and so share the deprivation and challenges of being kept in a red building in the countryside with inadequate food and crowded conditions.

Yes, this is another historical novel with two storylines set at different times. While Viola's story is far more eventful and dramatic, Laura's story was the one I was more interested in following. Morris does a great job of unwrapping how Laura's mother's desertion deeply affected her life and how she relates to other people. Viola's story, that of an adolescent behaving like an adolescent, was less compelling to me; Morris really nailed the behavior of that age and refused to do the usual thing of making Viola noble and self-sacrificing, as is usual in novels about this time. Morris explores how the circumstances of our childhoods form how we relate to the world in a thoughtful and insightful way, which makes this book worthwhile, despite the unrealistic ease at which Laura discovers information about her mother.

This powerful novel is not at all what I expected. Laura, our narrator for the "present" portions of the book, is the adult daughter of a mother, Viola, who abandoned the family when Laura was a preteen. Thirty years later, still hoping to discover her mother's whereabouts, Laura has headed to Italy, where her mother was from and where the family had spent Laura's first five years of her life. During her stay Laura meets with Viola's first love and learns the truth about Viola's upbringing.

I'm not going to go into details about what she learns and how she learns it, because that would detract from the sense of slow discovery that is one of "The Red House"'s pleasures. I will say that the writing is superb, though the use of an omniscient narrator at times made the book feel more "writerly" and less immersive at times (though that's probably a "me" issue). The ending seemed both inevitable and startling.

Thank you, Doubleday Books and NetGalley, for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.