The Way Back to Florence in Crossroads

Aug 23, 2015 Michael rated it really liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction, italy, romance, holocaust, art, world-war-2, jewish, aviation

A truly satisfying read about the experience of World War 2 in Italy from the perspective of an artist, Isabella, and her English husband, Freddie, who met her as an art student in Florence and now captains a bomber crew with the RAF. Oskar is another key character, a close friend from their student days who is a German Jew now returning to Italy with his young daughter Esme to escape the Holocaust. The strength of these characters bonds of love sustains them in the face of the chaos and destruc A truly satisfying read about the experience of World War 2 in Italy from the perspective of an artist, Isabella, and her English husband, Freddie, who met her as an art student in Florence and now captains a bomber crew with the RAF. Oskar is another key character, a close friend from their student days who is a German Jew now returning to Italy with his young daughter Esme to escape the Holocaust. The strength of these characters bonds of love sustains them in the face of the chaos and destructive forces of the war. In this debut novel, Haybittle does well not to overdo the romance element, nor to overwhelm the reader too much with the horrors or heroics of combat and survival. He makes art and aesthetic sensibility serve as a wonderful frame for the arc of the story, with Florence itself, a world treasure of Renaissance art and architecture, seeming to stand for all that is noble about civilization (“Florence exists to educate our memory”).

Isabella continues to work as a painter amidst the bombing and deprivations. It’s her only medium for being, “the act of painting like channelling clairvoyance down into her fingers”. Like the rest of the community she must negotiate the schemes and treachery of fascist authorities and anti-fascist resistance forces struggling for control of the community. Since the fall of Mussolini and the Allied landing in southern Italy, the Nazis have moved into the region. While they force Italy to submit their Jews for the Final Solution, they keep their hands clean of Geneva Convention violations by letting the local thugs in charge continue to carry out brutal imprisonment and torture of citizens. Isabelle gets involved in trying to protect masterpiece paintings from getting stolen by the Nazis and in helping Jews in hiding, and the trouble she gets in leads her to rely on the protection of a slimy aristocratic SS officer. Her bravery and the tense plotting made for a page turning reading experience.

I especially loved the alternating sections with Freddie’s activities. Despite significant readings in this area, it remains all but impossible to imagine how these guys kept doing their job of bombing missions despite the horrific losses from anti-aircraft and fighter plane attacks and from equipment failure. Haybittle does a great job making it real and plausible. The critical role of the sense of teamwork among the crew, the importance of humor and superstition, and various modes for relief of their stress between missions. That many of their bombs were killing civilians is an awful load we expected the airmen to bear. Freddie’s bond with his crewmen makes for heartbreak when some are lost and mentally demolished. His esthetic vision leads him to see beauty amid the terrors, as when the colors of the bombs and tracers appear like the chaos in a Turner painting. Sometimes near the target sight in Germany or Italy, it feels like he is entering a cathedral. On one run, the situation is imbued with a spiritual significance:

A searchlight catches the plane for an instant. The cockpit is awash with searing bluish brightness. As if a revelation is about to take place. As if an angel is about to appear. He can’t see the instrument panel. The finger of light has the aircraft in its grip. Holding her suspended above the city. As if she is perched on a tightrope. Visible to the whole of Berlin down below.

I can’t really share whether the author is going to let his characters survive or have them succumb to heroically fulfill the tragedy that is war. I can share a bit of uplift that Oskar experiences when he is among the resistance fighters in the woods near Florence.
The overwhelming feeling there by the stream was one of virtue. People were pared down to what was generous, selfless and clean in their natures. When we were staying in a church by the sea the priest spoke about war bringing forth miracles. About war not just as horror and deprivation. But of it creating moments, unrepeatable in peacetime, when it spurs an intimacy of fellowship that makes you feel proud of the human race. …War, grindingly, shifts one’s perspective from I to we.

For me the pleasure meter on this book was somewhere between the emotionally entertaining “The Nightingale” and the sublime artistry of “All the Light We Cannot See.” It did feel more realistic than either and covered a broader canvas than Russell’s tale of the plight of Italian refugees and partisans in “A Thread of Grace.” The wrenching divisions among families and communities over loyalty to the fascist cause brings back powerful memories of the Bertolucci masterpiece of a movie “Il Conformisto.” This book had the added boon of putting the places and art of Florence into the story. I have fond memories of the city from three weeks spent there when I was 16. I didn’t realize how much bombing damage it sustained or how close it came to more widespread destruction.

...more

42 likes · Like · see review

Jan 26, 2016 Booknblues rated it really liked it

Shelves: world-war-ll, italy, historical-fiction

"That there's a deep compulsion in the human spirit to overcome the selfish antics of the I in us. War grindingly, shifts one's perspective from I to we. Never again will many of us feel our lives so interpedently entwined as we do in these times of war. Never again will someone else's loss or gain become such an integral part of our own store of resources."

It is passages such as that which made me loveThe Way Back to Florence by Glenn Haybittle. It was a great coincidence that I found this wond ...more

14 likes · Like · see review

Apr 10, 2016 Lesley Moseley rated it it was ok

Hope this is one of the $1.99 Amazon Kindle specials... If there was a prize for the most clichés, tortured metaphors, this book would win...I fast forwarded through most of it..just silly... Wait 10 years for an unconsummated, non contact , husband?

Is she Italian? What language do they all speak?

3 likes · Like · see review

Mar 02, 2016 Denizen marked it as to-read

Shelves: historical-fiction, pub-2015, wwii, italy, 4plus-stars, own-kindle

Like

From the Bookshelf of Crossroads…

Find A Copy At

Group Discussions About This Book

What Members Thought

Crossroads