The Blind Contessa’s New Machine
Eighteen-year-old Contessa Carolina Fantoni lives a charmed life. She has a wealthy family, a beautiful estate, and is about to marry the most eligible bachelor in the region. But just as her future seems to be falling into place, Carolina’s sight begins to falter. Day by day, darkness closes in over her beloved lake house, her books, even the dresses she must don each morning. The only person who truly understands her predicament is Turri – the eccentric inventor who has been her friend from childhood. As Carolina is cut off from communication with her friends and family, Turri builds her a machine, a wondrous device that types letters onto paper and reconnects Carolina to the outside world. The gift sparks an illicit love affair that leads both Turri and Carolina into danger – and proves that love is, and always will be, blind.
Debut author Carey Wallace has crafted a lyrical novel in which each scene is sketched with brushstrokes as spare and beautiful as those of an Impressionist painting. While Wallace’s characters inhabit a near-fantasy world, bounded only loosely by the historical context of early 19th-century Italy, each lives and breathes as a real person with real joys and conflictions. Wallace’s dialogue is witty, her descriptions superb; every sentence holds a surprise. Wise, melancholy, and achingly beautiful, this little book is a gem.
