In Italy’s region of Tuscany Lucca and its province provides scarcely less fertile land for novel-writing than Florence and its own tradition of fiction with such titles as George Eliot’s ‘Romola’ and E. M. Forster’s ‘A Room with a View’.  Authors like David Plante (‘Annunciation’), Elizabeth George (‘Just One Evil Act’), Tatiana de Rosnay (‘Sarah’s Key’), Michael Dibdin (‘And then you Die’) and Margaret Moore (‘The Tuscan Termination’ series of novels) have all been inspired by the equally seductive atmosphere of this beautiful part of the peninsula. Note, among them, however, the preponderance of ‘gialli’ – the Italian term given to crime novels!

The Lucchesia’s literary background has already been well served by the ‘A Year in Bla-Bla Land’ type of book which combines travel encounters with the dual delights and hardships of restoring a derelict ‘casa colonica’ and it lacks nothing in historical accounts; a genre which includes such classics as Iris Origo’s ‘The Merchant of Prato’ and Eric Scigliano’s ‘Michelangelo’s Mountain: The Quest For Perfection in the Marble Quarries of Carrara’.

It is a rare thing, however, when a novel is published which combines themes ranging from historical accounts to personal experiences to descriptions of local places, traditions and events.

Anna Valencia’s ‘The Chestnut House’ is this very special kind of novel. It may be read principally as a work which interlaces the stories of various characters who are related to a specific area of Lucca province, the ‘Garfagnana’, that semi ‘wild-west’ part of Tuscany which, with its marble mountains, all-encompassing forests haunted by wolf-packs and isolated villages only quite recently connected by tarmac to the outside world, makes such a startling contrast to the touristic view of Tuscany as a land of rolling hills, vineyards, olive groves and rows of cypresses where one sips endless supplies of Chianti.

I quote from the publisher’s blurb regarding the novel and its author:

‘The Chestnut House’ deals with two women, separated by two generations and continents, both trapped in their grief and unable to move forwards. Upon inheriting Stazzana, a crumbling farmhouse in the wilderness of northern Tuscany, Emma flies out to Italy in the hopes that unravelling the truth of the past will heal her present. 

Local retired farmer Luciano befriends them and finds a new lease of life introducing them to the traditions and wildlife of the mountains, but he has his own secret to harbour, his own need for redemption. His sister, Giuliana, left Italy in 1945, and has spent her life running from the past, the past that Emma now seeks. Can the truth of what happened at Stazzana set them both free?

Despite graduating in Philosophy and French, it is Italian that truly speaks to Anna Valencia. Her passion has seen the writer live in Rome, Milan, and Tuscany. She currently resides with her husband and three children on the family farm in the Dartmoor National Park, Devon, England. Between teaching English to Italian students, she is currently writing her second novel. Her debut, The Chestnut House, is directly inspired by Anna’s farm in the Tuscan village of Montaltissimo, and the local history generously shared by her neighbours there.’

The novel’s narrative structure spreads itself out in chapters, each dedicated to one of its leading characters where they reveal their life experiences and memories regarding the mysteries of the Garfagnana. In this respect, before coming to live and work in Italy I had never known what it was like to reside in a former war zone and much of the storyline deals with the bloody civil war the ‘bel paese’ had to endure when local partisans fought against a puppet fascist government under German occupying forces. ‘The Chestnut House’ is particularly well-researched and the author has left a list of books consulted on this period of history at the end of the novel in addition to acknowledging the invaluable help she received from Molazzana’s ‘Museo della Linea Gotica’ which deals with the resistance.

One of the most endearing features of ‘The Chestnut House’ is that the Italian place-names in the book have not been fictionalised. These places do exist with the same names: there are villages called Sassi and Elio and the Pania Mountain, the queen of the Apuan range, still reigns supreme. Indeed, as there are ‘Sound of Music’ tours encouraged by the homonymous film in the gorgeous country round Salzburg, I feel that there very well could be similar tours motivated by this beautifully inspired novel which has been written with the most subtle honesty and disarming sincerity.

In these days reading ‘The Chestnut House’ seems to me to be particularly relevant. Not only are we experiencing hard times as a result of a most devastating pandemic but our age has sadly shown us that war in Europe is not just something from a heart-breaking past; we only have to switch on our television sets to witness the most atrocious sights involving everyone from the oldest to the youngest in a scenario which in Europe, we mistakenly thought, would never have to see again.

I especially recommend ‘The Chestnut House’ to all readers who love Italy, Lucca province and, in particular, the Garfagnana, whether, they are interested in the history of the area, whether they want to discover its traditions and cuisine, or whether they just want to read an engrossing and very moving story involving love and death, misplacement and self-realization, hindrance and encouragement.

For details on how you can order your copy see:

https://www.bookguild.co.uk/bookshop/book/291/The%20Chestnut%20House/

Or you can also obtain ‘The Chestnut House’ on-line on ‘Kindle’.

Below is a selection of photographs I have taken over the years while exploring the ‘Gothic Line’, that defensive wall dividing the Allied from the Axis forces during the last war.

PS We got to know the author as she and her husband were the original foster parents of our cat Archie (seen here on my wife Sandra’s recent birthday):