Yahoo Sports A tale of British expats, gunfire and mystery in the Tuscan hills
The “three graces” in Amanda Craig’s ninth novel are a trio of women “united by age, exile, the love of dogs and their disinclination to discuss their infirmities”. All in their eighties, they have escaped their families and Britain to “live in the present” in the Tuscan hills. “I want an adventure before dementia,” as Ruth, one of them, puts it.
Those familiar with Craig’s backlist will recognise Ruth, along with Marta and Diana, from previous novels such as The Golden Rule (2020) and The Lie of the Land (2017). Craig is loyal to her creations, turning major characters into minor ones and vice-versa, and to her topics, which are given a fresh perspective by the Italian setting: intergenerational differences, the death of local communities and global migration. They elevate her from a state-of-the-nation to a state-of-Europe novelist.
It’s 2022 and Ruth, a former consultant psychotherapist, has lived in her lovingly restored stone farmhouse in “Hampstead-on-Tuscany” since the 1990s. She’s hosting her grandson Ollie’s wedding to Tania, an influencer, though Ruth would prefer to be throwing herself a belated 80th-birthday party, now that pandemic travel restrictions have eased.
As ever with Craig’s work, there’s mystery afoot. It begins with the identity of the intruder shot one night by Enzo Rossi, a lonely and disaffected Tuscan who scratches a living doing odd jobs for the region’s expats. Enzo suspects that his victim was an illegal immigrant – but where’s the body? Is Blessing, a Zimbabwean man found wandering the hillside, really one of Ollie and Tania’s wedding guests? What’s with Raff, Ruth’s handy but troubled English labourer, who she suspects is “not quite what he appeared to be”? And why is a Russian oligarch living in a palazzo above Santorno, Craig’s generic hill-town?
Craig is a witty and perceptive writer with a fine line in figuration. Brambles snag Enzo’s trousers “like kittens that would soon become tigers”, and on a second reading, I was convinced that her repeated mention of nightingales and their constant trilling was a metaphor for Twitter. Still, as well-plotted and enjoyable as this novel is, I found myself craving something darker, something more like real life. The Italian-villa summer-holiday crowd may gulp this down like a bottle of Franciacorta, but Craig’s overly neat resolutions left me with a bit of a hangover.
The Three Graces is published by Little, Brown at £18.99. To order your copy, call 0844 871 1514 or visit Telegraph Books
