"Women in sunlight" by Frances Mayes

An audio book.

An American writer, Kit, 44, living in Tuscany, has had 3 poetry books and 2 biographies published. She quotes from Jon Ashbery et al. She's been living there with Colin (an architect she met soon after arriving) for over 10 years. She wants to write a book about her recently deceased author friend Margaret, who left her money. Margaret was 70+ and once lived in Sicily, writing Mafia exposés). She sees 3 older American women arriving.

We go back in time in North Carolina. 3 women meet at a retirement home open day. They get on well, learn from each other. Summaries of their lives are compared to peepholes. Camille's husband died of a heart attack. Julia's daughter Lizzie is an addict and her husband, Wade, is unfaithful. Susan is a widow. One of them has a plan to stay in Italy for a year. The other 2 agree.

Back in the book's present, the 3 are welcomed by the locals. A male tour guide chats up Julia and says he wants to extend his tours to Venice so they all go off to do some research. When they return they find that the 3 women's house has been broken into, and jewelry stolen. One of them decides to write a "How to learn Italian" book. Camille revives her painting interest, spending time with Rowan. Julia's Italian overtakes Kit's.

Kit is pregnant, something she thought impossible. She finds an unpublished manuscript by Margaret - an autobiography in which she says she got pregnant at 20 and had the boy (Colin!) adopted. The gifted boy died when he was 16. Kit decides that the biological father should know.

The sons/daughters of the 3 woman come over at Xmas and are impressed. Julia's partner, Chris, goes back to the States and tries to track down Julia's estranged daughter - she was last seen in an ambulance.

Camille puts an Art show on and is invited to exhibit as part of an international "New artists" show.

The baby arrives - he's fine. Kit realises that she and Colin have few relatives, worked hard, and didn't have much of a social life until the 3 women arrived.

Lizzie and Wade appear out of the blue - she's not dead!

When their year is up the 3 women decide to buy the villa.

It's an Italian "Best Exotic Marigold Hotel", a feel-good fantasy. The Americans all go crazy over Italian food (too many descriptions for my liking), the light, etc. Being involved with a traditional olive harvest is too good to be true. They're amazed at how orange the yolks are. Italian nouns are dropped into the narrative willy nilly. Monologues are used to add backstory. There are many changes of PoV, sometimes only for a sentence. I like some phrases: e.g. they "met as if underwater, in diving gear"

Other reviews

• goodreads
• Ashley Day
• Kirkus Review (a reader could almost skip 50 pages in the middle of Mayes' novel without even realizing it, because there is only the merest whisper of a plot. It takes too long to be able to tell the women apart, and the way the narrative switches between numerous points of view, both first- and third-person, doesn’t help)