L'America [Paperback]

Martha McPhee (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 9, 2007

In the brilliant Greek sunshine of a small Aegean island, Beth and Cesare meet—beginning a transformative love affair that spans two continents, two decades, and two lifetimes. Cesare is a privileged Italian boy, raised in a prosperous town where his family has lived for five hundred years; Beth, an ambitious American dreamer born to hippies and raised on a commune. The events of September 11 serve as a catalyst for the unfolding of their story, in which passion struggles against the inexorable force of patria.

The novel of the American in Europe has a long and lustrous pedigree. L’America adds to this lineage, an evocative portrait of the intersection between Europe and America, the old and the new, and the dizzying, life-changing power of first love.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Martha McPhee's L'America is a sweeping tale of transatlantic love, anger, tragedy, and reconciliation, told from both personal and historical perspectives. At the novel's core is an epic romance between an idealistic American and a pragmatic Italian, each of whom possess qualities that both repel and attract the other. The result is a journey through the lives and times of two people for whom an imperfect love will become the driving force for their entire past, present, and future.

Eighteen-year-old Beth arrives in Europe with a naiveté that is matched only by her bravado. The daughter of an aging hippie who runs a commune in memory of his dead wife, Beth is determined to explore the world her father so vehemently eschews. Cesare is a young Italian whose family history is deeply rooted in traditions that seem unbreakable. When they meet on a small Greek island, they are immediately drawn to the sense of "otherness" they see in each other. As their bond deepens, so do the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that keep preventing them from living happily ever after. But still, "What they wanted was to live something unlivable, step inside the lost chance."

McPhee is an extremely talented writer, and her detailed descriptions of sun-soaked Grecian beaches, overstuffed yet cozy New York apartments, and wide open Pennsylvanian orchards are as emotionally charged as her explorations of irrepressible love and cataclysmic grief. On occasion, her strong narrative voice seems to overpower her characters, but she always knows just when to come back to the raw beauty of Beth and Cesare's story. It is that purity, both of love and of loss, that makes L'America a gorgeous treasure to behold. --Gisele Toueg --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

A soft clash of civilizations disrupts romance in this rapturous but socially acute fable of cross-class love. Sojourning in Europe, 18-year-old Beth, raised by her hippie father on a Pennsylvania commune, finds her polar opposite in Cesare, handsome scion of a 500-year-old Italian banking dynasty. For the motherless Beth, Cesare represents the allure of rootedness and gracious traditions. For Cesare, straitjacketed by family, class expectations and a prospective banking career he dreads, Beth represents America's wide-open possibilities, headquartered at her father's egalitarian but entrepreneurial commune, a refuge for dreamers of all stripes seeking to reinvent themselves. Besotted as they are with each other, Beth and Cesare find themselves drawn apart—Cesare back to the comforting confines of his hometown, Beth to New York, where her idea of home is a succession of illegal sublets and where she commercializes her love of Italy by writing cookbooks and starting restaurants. McPhee's lush, erotically charged prose evokes their erotic obsession—and the glamorous Old World locales where it blossoms—but, as in her well-received family sagas Bright Angel Time and Gorgeous Lies, McPhee's real subject is the larger forces that shape individual lives and passions. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (April 9, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156032368
• ISBN-13: 978-0156032360
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,445,413 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A romantic and emotional journey through two continents... July 3, 2006

By Book Lover

Format:Hardcover

This novel grabbed me right away. I'm not typically a sucker for romances -- I don't watch cheesy Julia Roberts movies, no Harlequin novels, nothing of that sort. But, I must say, this one was very touching. I think it is because the writing is so well done, the characters so beautifully developed, that the love story just became an added bonus. I also treasured the exotic locales McPhee takes the reader to -- from Spain to Greece to Italy to southern France; it made me want to jump on the next plane and experience these places for myself. I knew when I first picked up this book that there would be some connection to 9/11, and I was a bit concerned on how that would be dealt with. I needn't have worried. McPhee handles this delicate event with the sensitivity of a native New Yorker. It was subtle, but always lurking below the surface. I think it is the subtleties of this novel that make it so remarkable. The story is told in such a unique way, not linear at all. In fact, it almost "swirled," returning again and again to scenes as it slowly moved forward and back through time. I highly recommend this novel for just about anyone.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant! June 5, 2006

By Blank Page

Format:Hardcover

The only thing I knew about L'America before reading it was the underpinning of September 11th, which is handled so delicately and held at such a distance that it simply (yet powerfully) serves to remind us of the fraility of life, the illusive nature of fate, and the extraordinary depth of lives lived by "ordinary" people. "By you," you can almost hear McPhee whispering into your ear. And even if you haven't been to Italy, made love in a public park beneath a towering Pine tree, or gave up love for the sake of independence (or vice versa), by the end of this book you'll remember your own coming-of-age with just as much intensity as Cesare's and Beth's (the book's main characters). In fact, the author's talents as a writer surpass her exquisite scene and character development (both of which are superb) in her ability to expose the universal experience of intimacy (love, loss, life, death) while writing with such artful precision that this centuries' old tale about a love affair wrought with the naivete and willfulness of youth feels like a first...just as it does when lived through in life. I also enjoyed the moments of recollection that came with the wisdom and resignation of age allowing the author, literally, to catch the reader reading personal experiences into the pages. At just the right moments McPhee subtly encourages you to stop and reflect, recognize even, the life-defining choices that make us who we are...or, as L'America often eludes, understand who we've been along. Universal, yet intimate, and ultimately, brilliant!!

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars L'America May 9, 2006

By Carol Winters

Format:Hardcover

A facinating look at the lives of two lovers through the years, their stories gradually revealed in their and other various characters' voices interwoven throughout the novel. Beth and Cesare, from two very different worlds - literally, meet and fall desperately in love on a Greek island, then continue their romance both in Cesare's Italy and Beth's America. Tradition, ambition & cultural expectations keep them apart yet they continue to remain emotionally attached.

A wonderfully intriguing tale of passion and the two very different cultures that shape these lovers and ultimately make their love impossible.

1.0 out of 5 stars Even the crickets were sleeping September 18, 2011

By Happy Go Lucky

Format:Paperback

I love romances and the cover is more intriguing than the story. The readers have to work through all the mire of information about the characters' lives which didn't interest me enough to finish the book. There are very few books that I have left unfinished but I am sorry to say I just couldn't go on.

7 of 11 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars "On that Island Beth and Cesare are perpetually falling in love" May 26, 2006

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Spoilers Ahead!

Martha McPhee's L'America is so much more than an epic and immortal love story between a naive American girl and a sensual Italian boy. The novel is also a strangely beautiful deference to art, food, intimacy and the ineffable transatlantic bond between the old world and the new, where the age-old traditionalism of Italy meets the noisy modernism of America.

When Beth and Cesare meet one untroubled summer on the small Greek Island of Paros "floating in the Aegean like a song", little do they know their affair will last for almost two decades, transcending their families and their respective cultures. The attraction is instant, the love between them a formidable force, "the draw, the pull, the urgency behind the love - the desire to conquer the impossible."

Beth is only 18 years old, when she takes off to Europe with her best friend Silvia. Their trip brings them to Greece where the blond and blue-eyed Beth meets the dark and swarthy Cesare on some steps leading up to a whitewashed pensione. His eyes lock onto her for an instant only, but long enough for her to feel a shock, a job, and a stab "and then nothing was the same."

Cesare Cellini is from Citts, a small rich town nestled into the foothills of the Alps, famous for it's industry of socks and shoes. His moneyed family is resolutely embedded in the old-world, with five and twenty generations behind them. For Cesare, Beth represents a refreshing change - almost like "a prism, always reflecting new light."

Cesare's other Italian girlfriends have always known their path, but Beth is so different, so young, and modern and carefree; they speak about everything and anything, each one comfortable, eager to unfold to the exclusion of all others.... From the beginning, however, there's a real sense that this couple will have to fight to stay together, it's as though their time cannot last.

Claire, Beth's mother died in a car crash in Turkey when Beth was three, and her unconventional father raised her on a Pennsylvanian hippie commune. As a little girl, she was sent to New York to live with her status conscious grandmother, "a self-confessed opera buff and patron of the Met." Yet Beth constantly fights to free herself from the strictures of her youth, and it comes as no surprise that when she falls in love Italy, the whole experience makes her eager, anxious and giddy.

Beth will never be accepted into Cesare's self-important and conservative family. She tries to get him to come to America - and for one year he actually does - but his life back in Italy has already been decided for him and he cannot humiliate his family. This is from a man who grew up dreaming of the big roads of America "of which Simon and Garfunkel sang - a place where people did what they chose and anyone could become anything."

McPhee exquisitely moves her characters backwards and forwards in time - from the early 1970's to 2017 - the climax coming at the beginning of the novel, when Beth ultimately loses her life in the World Trade Center on 9/11. It's a shocking revelation, because for most of their lives, Cesare and Beth have been reinforced by a shared adversity, forever joined in mutual respect.

Together, Cesare and Beth are buoyed by abundance and risk, experimentation and discovery, yet they seem to be incapable of transcending the strictures of their respective countries and actually forging out a life together. She falls sweetly, deeply and permanently for him, whilst he loves her for her lack of sophistication and style, "she is the Stature of Liberty, he's the Roman Empire."

As with all tragic love stories, stubbornness and selfishness eventually derails the relationship. She wants him to give America a try, to construct his own life, separate from the life being handed to him by his family, whilst he cannot escape the guilt and laziness of having his life decided for him. It doesn't help that Cesare begins to see America as filthy, a place filled with "smokestacks and fuel tanks," the air thick with smells, "and of strip towns with drive thu-just-about-anything, seedy hotels and lonely phone booths on long lonely roads."

In the long run, Beth returns to America and becomes an entrepreneur, fired up by her ambitious nature, the beauty of exotic food and her innate talent for cooking. Cesare becomes a rich and prominent citizen of Citts and he lends money, just as his father did and his father's father did. Both of them eventually drift into other marriages and relationships, their connection to each other tempered by occasion and by experience.

L'America is a compelling story of love and its victory over time and how love can unpredictably steal from death. The novel is also is a heart-wrenching portrait of a young couple's private passions, obsessions and immense appetite for life - Beth and Cesare's tragic love does indeed transcend time and place, and is ultimately immortalized forever.

When Cesare finally learns of Beth's death via an email, he must finally grapple with his feelings and admit, once and for all, that she really was his one great and true love. Mike Leonard May 06. Read more ›