Last Voyage of the Valentina [Hardcover]

Santa Montefiore (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 23, 2006

Exotically beautiful but desperately unhappy, Alba lives on a houseboat on the Thames, where she enjoys a life of leisure and entertains an endless and unfulfilling succession of lovers. Though irresistible to men, her striking Mediterranean features and fiery temper distance her from her father and stepmother's aristocratic and highly traditional English family.

When Alba discovers a portrait of her dead mother, Valentina -- a mysterious Italian beauty she'd hardly known, whose story has been kept from her by her still grieving father -- she is instantly shaken from complacency. Determined to learn the truth about Valentina, Alba returns to the olive groves of the Amalfi coast of Italy, to her mother's tiny village of Incantellaria, ignoring the friends and family who urge her to leave the past alone. Once there, Alba discovers cultural roots and the love of a new family, and begins to uncover wartime secrets protected for decades. Alba's quest to understand her mother's identity takes her beyond anything she could have imagined, revealing a mysterious tale of desperation, decadence, deception, murder, and betrayal involving partisans and Nazis, peasants and counts. Alba's journey leads her not only to the truth of her family's hidden past but to the possibility of love and happiness in her own future.

Last Voyage of the Valentina is a sweeping, romantic story that makes for a great escape for any booklover.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Long-legged, lascivious Alba lives on a London houseboat, the Valentina, moored in 1971 London. She is the daughter of a WWII romance; her proper English father, Thomas Arbuckle, and stepmother ("the Buffalo") never mention her mysterious Italian mother—Valentina—who died when she was a baby. As a discovered sketch sparks Alba's curiosity about her mother's past, she takes up with literary agent Fitz Conroy, then breaks it off and goes to Italy to learn the truth about her past. Though this is Montefiore's U.S. debut, more than three million copies of her books are in print in the EU (the press chat notes that Charles and Camilla "made their debut as a couple" at Montefiore's wedding to historian Simon Sebag). Presumably, her EU translators were able to make lines like "Don't talk, you fool. Kiss me," sound more seductive and surprising in other languages than they do in the King's English. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Montefiore is well known by women's-fiction readers in England but less recognized in the U.S. All that is about to change with her new book, a sweeping saga of wartime romance, family secrets, lost loves, and murder. Switching between wartime Italy and 1970s London, the book tells the story of Alba Arbuckle, whose father, Thomas, fell in love with a beautiful Italian girl during the war. After the war, he returns to the tiny Italian village of Incantelleria to marry his lovely Valentina, who has already borne him a child, Alba. But Thomas and baby Alba return to England alone. Devastated, Thomas eventually marries a tweedy Englishwoman who tries to mother the increasingly defiant Alba. As she grows up, Alba becomes a rebellious, shallow young woman with a string of lovers. Eventually, she goes to Italy to find her "real" family. What she discovers there changes her life forever. Montefiore is a grand storyteller. Her near-lyrical descriptive prose is appealing on its own; the plot is involving on multiple levels, crossing several genres; and her characters step well beyond formula. All in all, a fine way for American readers to get to know the Montefiore name, which will very soon be cropping up in the same sentences as the name Maeve Binchy. Emily Melton
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone (May 23, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743299434
• ISBN-13: 978-0743299435
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,012,136 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born in England in 1970. My father is a farmer. When I was born he had grown a very successful crop of winter barley called Senter barley, so he suggested they name me Senter in celebration. My mother is Anglo Argentine and naturally thought it a terrible idea, so suggested Santa, which means saint in Spanish. Growing up I wanted to be called Jane. There isn't a joke I haven't heard. Now I rather like it, combined with my husband's name Montefiore, which means mountain flower in Italian, I think it's rather colourful. I always wanted to be a writer. There has never been a time when I haven't written. I spent a year in Argentina when I was nineteen and that changed my life in so many ways. I loved who I was when I was there. Speaking another language, not being boxed by class as we are in England, being free to be the person I chose rather than being dictated to by expectation. I fell in love with the pampa, the flat, fertile plains, the smells of gardenia and eucalyptus, the expressive, passionate people I met there. I wrote my first novel Meet Me Under The Ombu Tree, inspired by the country I had fallen in love with. My first four novels are based in Latin America. They're not sold in the USA yet. Here's hoping! My other four are published by Simon & Schuster. I live in London with my husband, the historian and novelist Simon Sebag-Montefiore, and our two children, Lily and Sasha.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Promises, promises!, June 2, 2006

By 

F. S. L'hoir (Irvine, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Last Voyage of the Valentina (Paperback)

The cover of this book promised a "dark mystery" that would sweep me from "war-torn Italy to aristocratic 1960s London." [1970s actually!] Since, however, the characters are unpleasant, the settings are charmless, and the situations are not only unlikely but also reminiscent of twice-viewed (and better-told) Italian films, I was swept off to sleep.

In turgid prose [The words "her strange eyes" recur at least four times], the author relates the story of Alba Arbuckle, who is constantly wriggling about in Mary Quant mini-skirts and flashing her knickers (or lack of them) at local vicars and anyone else who happens to enter her orbit. One day, after a steamy session of casual love-in-the-afternoon, Alba discovers a scroll under her bed [Where else?]. It is a pastel drawing of her long-dead mother, and it is inscribed by her father [in bad Latin: "dum spiro, ti amo"-- "Amo" takes the accusative "te" in Latin.]. This plot device sends Alba on a quest to discover the secret of her past (She should have stood in bed!).

As a lover of Italy, I was hoping that the flashbacks set in a mythical town "Incantellaria" on the Amalfi Coast, would be worth persuing. I was disappointed. We have olive and cypress trees, purple wisteria, noisy cicadas--pasta with "fish sauce," even (117), and the beauteous Valentina, who, of course, wears a semitransparent dress and walks like a duck: "her feet turning outward, she held her stomach in, pushed her bottom out, and swung her hips" (112). Valentina, Alba's mother, is identified by the scent of figs, making me wonder if the author has ever stood in a grove of fig trees, which give off a strong smell that recalls uric acid.

I suppose I should have been warned by the words "old-fashioned blockbuster" in the blurb on the back of the book, but I was seduced by "the olive groves of the Amalfi coast," an enchanted setting, which, now that I think about it, is noted not for its olives but for its lemons.

Limoncello, anyone?

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lovely writing, August 23, 2007

By 

F.Faulkner "F.F." (Hartford, CT USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Last Voyage of the Valentina (Paperback)

I liked the prose of the novel, the settings, the descriptions of the atmosphere. Alba was an interesting character. But in the end, I was deeply disappointed by the lack of an ending, or the open ending. I have no idea what the writer intended, but I was left with a sour sense. In the end, I felt by doing what she did, she was NO better than Valentina. Her behavior was hurtful to Fitz, and selfish.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars shallow and insipid, September 7, 2010

By 

Lacy - See all my reviews

This review is from: Last Voyage of the Valentina (Paperback)

I stopped reading this book about 100 pages in, and that's unusual for me. I rarely give up on a book...it seems wasteful somehow. But I am learning to...since there are so many fabulous books to read, why waste my time with something bad? The main character is a spoiled whiny brat, but of course she's gorgeous so she has her choice of any man on the planet and indulges in endless slutty behavior. And there aren't even any good sex scenes, if that's your thing. The book is supposed to show her inner beauty and how she finds love and peace. Don't waste your time. She has no inner beauty.