The Road to Pienza (The Road to Montepulciano, book 2) By Garrick Jones Published by GRJ Books, 2025 Five stars
We are lucky to have such a voice as Garrick Jones’s. And that’s not a sly allusion to his career in opera. His voice and prose are both elegant and literate, but at the same time entirely apt for whatever period he is choosing to represent on the page. Being an Australian, Jones brings an informality to his approach to writing as well as a non-British-but-English-speaking perspective.
The Road to Pienza is really the finale to The Road to Montepulciano, set a decade later in Damson O’Reilly’s life. He has become successful, and even famous, with his books—noir non-fiction stories that have found a global audience. The crumbling stone farmhouse, la Mensola, has expanded into a charming rural getaway with a working farm and a guest house, while he and his policeman-turned-lawyer partner, Giancarlo Manetti, have managed to acquire large apartments in both Venice and Florence. It is an ideal existence for these two still-young men, until a legal case of Giancarlo’s suddenly turns dark.
Having spent his years in Italy building a community in and around Pienza, Damson and Giancarlo now have connections and friends all over northern Italy. Damson’s publisher is Australian, and in fact the most powerful media executive in Australia. The book opens with Damson’s recounting of the return trip via ocean liner from his book tour Down Under. It gives us a sense of how big he has become (with the CEO’s son Kendall as his personal manager), and yet reminds us that he is still the self-confident, thoughtful, and humane man we remember from the first book. Success has not spoiled Damson O’Reilly; it has made him better.
Two personal twists present themselves once Damson has returned to Tuscany. He finds that a local priest, Father Ignazio, who has become a close friend over the years, has had a crisis of faith. Alfonso seeks out Damson as his confessor and mentor. When his partner Giancarlo returns to la Mensola, Damson learns about a complicated lawsuit he’s working on involving Giovanni Scavola, a hugely powerful business man with deep ties to Mussolini’s blackshirts from the war. These two men draw out Damson’s pastoral side, and his investigator side, two threads that carry though the entire narrative.
These two threads, characterized by love and by violence, shape the story, amplified by O’Reilly’s expanded role in the world since his success. No longer simply a story of small-town rural Italy, it becomes an international tale of brutality and corruption.
There’s a lot in this book that made me uncomfortable, but that’s no fault of the author. As I noted in my review of The Road to Montepulciano, Damson makes me feel entirely inadequate. His view of the world, as a gay man without shame in the decades before Stonewall (which is an American thing anyway), represents something that was largely invisible to most people in 1960 (when I was all of five years old). O’Reilly never once questions his outlook on the world, and bears no judgment on anyone he calls a friend.
It is a complicated, emotionally charged, and at times hair-raising mixture of romance and revenge. Jones offers up many fascinating characters, and never lets you stop wondering what will come next—right up to the startling epilogue, set in 1985 (the year I first visited Italy). It’s an amazing, beautiful book.
By Garrick Jones
Published by GRJ Books, 2025
Five stars
We are lucky to have such a voice as Garrick Jones’s. And that’s not a sly allusion to his career in opera. His voice and prose are both elegant and literate, but at the same time entirely apt for whatever period he is choosing to represent on the page. Being an Australian, Jones brings an informality to his approach to writing as well as a non-British-but-English-speaking perspective.
The Road to Pienza is really the finale to The Road to Montepulciano, set a decade later in Damson O’Reilly’s life. He has become successful, and even famous, with his books—noir non-fiction stories that have found a global audience. The crumbling stone farmhouse, la Mensola, has expanded into a charming rural getaway with a working farm and a guest house, while he and his policeman-turned-lawyer partner, Giancarlo Manetti, have managed to acquire large apartments in both Venice and Florence. It is an ideal existence for these two still-young men, until a legal case of Giancarlo’s suddenly turns dark.
Having spent his years in Italy building a community in and around Pienza, Damson and Giancarlo now have connections and friends all over northern Italy. Damson’s publisher is Australian, and in fact the most powerful media executive in Australia. The book opens with Damson’s recounting of the return trip via ocean liner from his book tour Down Under. It gives us a sense of how big he has become (with the CEO’s son Kendall as his personal manager), and yet reminds us that he is still the self-confident, thoughtful, and humane man we remember from the first book. Success has not spoiled Damson O’Reilly; it has made him better.
Two personal twists present themselves once Damson has returned to Tuscany. He finds that a local priest, Father Ignazio, who has become a close friend over the years, has had a crisis of faith. Alfonso seeks out Damson as his confessor and mentor. When his partner Giancarlo returns to la Mensola, Damson learns about a complicated lawsuit he’s working on involving Giovanni Scavola, a hugely powerful business man with deep ties to Mussolini’s blackshirts from the war. These two men draw out Damson’s pastoral side, and his investigator side, two threads that carry though the entire narrative.
These two threads, characterized by love and by violence, shape the story, amplified by O’Reilly’s expanded role in the world since his success. No longer simply a story of small-town rural Italy, it becomes an international tale of brutality and corruption.
There’s a lot in this book that made me uncomfortable, but that’s no fault of the author. As I noted in my review of The Road to Montepulciano, Damson makes me feel entirely inadequate. His view of the world, as a gay man without shame in the decades before Stonewall (which is an American thing anyway), represents something that was largely invisible to most people in 1960 (when I was all of five years old). O’Reilly never once questions his outlook on the world, and bears no judgment on anyone he calls a friend.
It is a complicated, emotionally charged, and at times hair-raising mixture of romance and revenge. Jones offers up many fascinating characters, and never lets you stop wondering what will come next—right up to the startling epilogue, set in 1985 (the year I first visited Italy). It’s an amazing, beautiful book.