The House of Whispers
Rome 1938. From the first time she meets Dante Cavallera, piano teacher Eva Valenti is fascinated by the good-looking widower, father of her newest pupil, Chiara. But inexplicable events take place in the Cavallera house, and both Chiara and her younger brother seem troubled. As Fascism spreads in Italy, Eva, like her friends, Jewish Mirella and gay Ettore, finds herself in danger because of her Slovene parentage. While Mirella chooses to flee and Ettore to fight, Eva hopes her growing closeness to the Cavallera family might save her – but will it?
This is an atmospheric, Gothic tale which captures well the increasingly fraught situation, both politically and in the possibly haunted Cavallera house. There are elements of Du Maurier’s Rebecca in Eva’s sense of inadequacy when compared to Dante’s dead wife, the glamorous and capable Adelina. Eva herself is a convincing portrait of a woman damaged both by losing her identity and by her parents’ abusive marriage. Her teenage troubles give her insight into what might be bothering Chiara, but also raise the possibility that the strange events she experiences may be the product of her imagination.
The pace of the novel flags ever so slightly towards the middle, while the political situation deteriorates and Eva dithers, but after that it gathers pace again. The blurb does the reader no favours by completely ignoring the first half of the book, and the epilogue seems to overlook the fact that Mirella would have been in just as much danger in Vichy France as in any other part of German-occupied Europe. But aside from these minor niggles, this is an accomplished novel that should appeal to lovers of darkly Gothic stories.
