Tag Italy

The cover depicts an Italian town on the coastline against a pale orange sky, with the cliffs overlooking a sky-blue sea and the green hills in the distance.

Meet Rebecca Serle, Author of One Italian Summer

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Author Rebecca Serle wears a pink floral slip dress and sits in the corner of a beige sofa.

Sun, Mar 12
2 – 4 pm
Miller Branch & online
In partnership with Columbia Inspired magazine
Register here for the in-person event and here for the online event.

“[A] magical trip worth taking.” — Associated Press

The New York Times bestselling author of In Five Years returns with a powerful novel about the transformational love between mothers and daughters set on the breathtaking Amalfi Coast.

When Katy’s mother dies, she is left reeling. Carol wasn’t just Katy’s mom, but her best friend and first phone call. She had all the answers, and now, when Katy needs her the most, she is gone. To make matters worse, their planned mother-daughter trip of a lifetime looms: two weeks in Positano, the magical town where Carol spent the summer right before she met Katy’s father. Katy has been waiting years for Carol to take her, and now she is faced with embarking on the adventure alone.

But as soon as she steps foot on the Amalfi Coast, Katy begins to feel her mother’s spirit. Buoyed by the stunning waters, beautiful cliffsides, delightful residents, and, of course, delectable food, Katy feels herself coming back to life.

And then Carol appears—in the flesh, healthy, sun-tanned, and thirty years old. Katy doesn’t understand what is happening, or how—all she can focus on is that she has somehow, impossibly, gotten her mother back. Over the course of one Italian summer, Katy gets to know Carol, not as her mother, but as the young woman before her. She is not exactly who Katy imagined she might be, however, and soon Katy must reconcile the mother who knew everything with the young woman who does not yet have a clue.

Rebecca Serle’s next great love story is here, and this time it’s between a mother and a daughter. With her signature “heartbreaking, redemptive, and authentic” (Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling author) prose, Serle has crafted a transcendent novel about how we move on after loss, and how the people we love never truly leave us.

The cover depicts an Italian town on the coastline against a pale orange sky, with the cliffs overlooking a sky-blue sea and the green hills in the distance.

One Italian Summer is available from HCLS in print, as an audiobook on CD, and as an e-book and an e-audiobook from Libby/OverDrive.

After the presentation, you can purchase her book and have it have it autographed (while supplies last). For those attending virtually, books are available to purchase online from The Last Word Bookstore.

Rebecca Serle discusses her book with Anika Baty-Mills.

Rebecca Serle is an author and television writer who lives in New York and Los Angeles. Serle co-developed the hit TV adaptation of her YA series Famous in Love, and is also the author of In Five Years and The Dinner List, and YA novels The Edge of Falling and When You Were Mine. She received her MFA from the New School in New York, NY.

Anika Baty-Mills is the publisher and owner of Columbia Inspired magazine. Columbia Inspired magazine is a digital publication that provides a safe space for each and every reader to feel seen, heard, and cared for. Its mission is to help readers create, implement, and nurture their own version of a healthy lifestyle.  For the last 18 years, Anika and her family have lived, worked, and played here in Howard County and she is proud to be bringing the community together one click at a time.

In partnership with Columbia Inspired magazine and Prince George’s County Memorial Library System.

Please register for the in-person event or the online event with an email address to receive an immediate registration confirmation.

The book cover depicts a pale orange curtain falling waves, with dappled stripes of bright yellow sunlight across it. The title and author's name, with "winner of the Pulitzer Prize," are superimposed in white script.

Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri

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The book cover depicts a pale orange curtain falling waves, with dappled stripes of bright yellow sunlight across it. The title and author's name, with "winner of the Pulitzer Prize," are superimposed in white script.

By Piyali C.

In the simple, succinct, and gorgeous prose that is her trademark, Jhumpa Lahiri, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Namesake, Interpreter of Maladies: Stories, and other works, writes about the observations of a single, unnamed woman living alone in an unnamed city in Italy in Whereabouts. Each chapter in this book reads like a page from a beautifully crafted journal. They are chronicles of our protagonist’s day to day life – be it walking over a bridge where she occasionally comes across her ex-boyfriend, or her sojourn to her favorite sandwich store where she buys the same lunch every day, or her trip to the swimming pool where she meets women who share their stories with each other verbally, or even the stories they share through each hard-earned wrinkle on their faces or their swollen feet or the extra flesh in their midsection. The woman of our story quietly listens. Through her ruminations about her past we come to know about her parents, their eccentricities, her relationship with them, her mother’s financial dependence on her father, and her subsequent financial education to her daughter which influences the woman’s monetary decisions all her life (and not necessarily in a helpful way).

The narrator is lonely sometimes, and sometimes she cherishes her solitude. She is frustrated with the sameness of her life sometimes, and sometimes she is content simply sitting at the piazza in front of her apartment observing frenetic activities in her neighborhood. She falls asleep at night reassured by the noise of traffic and wakes up deep in the night, disconcerted at the silence around her when the sounds of automobiles have ceased. She could be any of us – a juxtaposition of contrasts – and perhaps this ‘everywoman’ trait of the protagonist makes the book and her so relatable.  Her keen sense of observation is what many of us lack these days. It was such a joy to see the world – her world and for a short time our world, too – through her eyes. Even after the book ended, I seemed to linger by the side of the piazza eyeing the sandwich store and looking at the men and women living their lives in that unnamed city in Italy. This is a deeply contemplative novel made up of vignettes from a middle aged woman’s everyday life. There is no catastrophic event in this story, no climax or anti climax. It simply tells the tale of life and in doing so it becomes strangely captivating. At the end of the day, I agree with the description that the publisher provides for this short novel – “Whereabouts is an exquisitely nuanced portrait of urban solitude…”

I would like to share a snippet just to whet your appetite for this truly beautiful literary novel so you can borrow it from Howard County Library System for your next read. There is a passage where the woman comes face to face with the man she once loved in the middle of a bridge. Lahiri writes

“We stop in the middle and look at the wall that flanks the river, and the shadows of pedestrians cast on its surface. They look like skittish ghosts advancing in a row, obedient souls passing from one realm to another. The bridge is flat and yet it’s as if the figures – vaporous shapes against the solid wall – are walking uphill, always climbing. They’re like inmates who proceed, silently, toward a dreadful end” (6-7).

This is simply one example of many where I felt Lahiri painted pictures for me with her words.

Whereabouts is also available in large print and in eBook and eAudiobook format via Overdrive/Libby. Whereabouts is Jhumpa Lahiri’s first novel written in Italian, as well as the first time she has self-translated a full-length work.

Piyali is an instructor and research specialist at the Miller Branch of HCLS, where she co-facilitates both Global Reads and Strictly Historical Fiction.