Grove by Esther Kinsky

An unnamed narrator, recently bereaved, travels to Olevano, a small village southeast of Rome. It is winter, and from her temporary residence on a hill between village and cemetery, she embarks on walks and outings, exploring the banal and the sublime with equal dedication and intensity. She recalls her travels in 1970s Italy, which she often visited as a child with her father. Fragmented impressions and memories - of Communist party rallies, roadside restaurants, film sequences, bird life, and the ubiquitous Etruscan necropoli - combine into a peculiar mosaic of a bygone era. Then the narrators visits Northern Italy, between Ferrara and the Po estuary, some years after the bereavement. She looks for the garden of the Finzi-Contini family, walks along deserted canals and explores abandoned seaside resorts. Seeing, describing, naming the world around her is her way of redefining her place within it. Written in a rich and poetic style, GROVE is an exquisite novel of grief, love and landscapes.