The Enchanted April, by Elizaberth von Arnim, is my first book read in 2021. It was a reread of a book I love, so it was a comforting and enjoyable way to start this new reading year. It is a lovely book to read in the dead of winter. It is so full of color and the warmth of the sun. In a time of continuing quarantine, it’s revives the spirit and quenches the thirst for travel to warmer climes.

Synopsis from the publisher:

A discreet advertisement in The Times, addressed to “those who appreciate wisteria and sunshine,” is the prelude to a revelatory month for four very different women. High above a bay on the Italian Riviera stands the medieval castle San Salvatore. Beckoned to this haven are Mrs. Wilkins, Mrs. Arbuthnot, Mrs. Fisher, and Lady Caroline Dester, each quietly craving a respite. Lulled by the gentle spirit of the Mediterranean, they gradually shed their public skins, discovering a harmony each of them has longed for but none has ever known. First published in 1922, this captivating novel is imbued with the descriptive power and lighthearted irreverence for which Elizabeth von Arnim is renowned.

Favorite descriptions from the book:

“All the radiance of April in Italy lay gathered together at her feet. The sun poured in on her. The sea lay asleep in it, hardly stirring. Across the bay the lovely mountains, exquisitely different in color, were asleep too in the light; and underneath her window, at the bottom of the flower-starred grass slope from which the wall of castle rose up, was a great cypress, cutting through the delicate blues and violets and rose-colors of the mountains and the sea like a great black sword.

She stared. Such beauty; and she there to see it. Such beauty; and she alive to feel it. Her face was bathed in light.”

“All down the stone steps on either side were periwinkles in full flower, and she could now see what it was that had caught at her the night before and brushed, wet and scented, across her face. It was wistaria. Wistaria and sunshine . . . she remembered the advertisement. Here indeed were both in profusion. The wistaria was tumbling over itself in its excess of life, its prodigality of flowering; and where the pergola ended the sun blazed on scarlet geraniums, bushes of them, and nasturtiums in great heaps, and marigolds so brilliant that they seemed to be burning, and red and pink snapdragons, all outdoing each other in bright, fierce colour. The ground behind these flaming things dropped away in terraces to the sea, each terrace a little orchard, where among the olives grew vines on trellises, and fig-trees, and peach-trees, and cherry-trees.

The story is not all sunshine and light, however. The four women brought together by that wonderful advertisement, have complicated lives, marriages, relationships. We get to know each of their stories very well. It’s quite fascinating to see the profound effect such a month away from their usual lives has on each of them.

Castello Brown: the author used this castle for the setting of this novel.

Garden at Castello Brown

I chose to read this book as one of my 50-books-in-5-years for The Classics Club.