The Enemy of Love (Aria Book)
1943 was a difficult year for Italy. Until July it fought as an ally of Germany against the British and Americans in Tunisia and Sicily. Then after a two-month spell of neutrality in the summer, it was invaded and occupied by both the Germans and the Allies, the Germans taking the North and the Centre and the Allies taking the South. Loyalties were confused and divided.
The Enemy of Love is set in a village in Umbria, occupied by the Germans. The conflict of political loyalties is mirrored by conflicts of love and ambition between the Capaldi and di Luca families. Sophia di Luca reluctantly falls in love with Giorgio Capaldi, who has inherited the restaurant where she works and which she had expected to inherit herself.
Gradually loyalties sort themselves out, thanks largely to the brutality of the German occupiers. The lovers learn to love each other, and they all learn to hate the Germans.
This is a very predictable love story with the war almost as a sub-theme (far from war being the enemy of love, it seems to sharpen the erotic instinct). The Italian setting is lovingly described, and there is a great deal about Italian food, with detailed menus for all the communal feasts, notwithstanding the wartime rationing. Not exactly a feel-good book, for there is a lot of war yet to come when the story ends, but rather a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit in times of extreme adversity.
