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The View from the Tower
"Can she trust them? Can you?" A psychological thriller about love and betrayal, and the damage done when ideals and human lives come into conflict. Helen is in a hotel room with her lover when a gunman murders her husband, Federico, a high-level civil servant, less than a mile away. Helen soon finds herself entangled in a web of suspicion that involves those closest to her - Federico, his parents, and her friend and lover, Giacomo, an ex-terrorist with a new wife and a reinvented life in Paris. As Helen struggles to understand her husband's death and the extent to which she and the people she knows and loves may have been responsible for it, she is forced to examine her own past and the world in which she lives - and to realise innocence is a very scarce commodity.
336 pages, Paperback
First published December 31, 2013
2 people are currently reading
579 people want to read
About the author
Charles Lambert
82 books204 followersCharles Lambert was born in the United Kingdom but has lived in Italy for most of his adult life. His most recent novel is Birthright, set in Rome in the 1980s and examining what happens when two young women discover that they are identical twins, separated at birth. In 2022, he published The Bone Flower, a Gothic love story with a sinister edge, set in Victorian London. His previous novel, Prodigal, shortlisted for the Polari Prize in 2019, was described by the Gay & Lesbian Review as "Powerful… an artful hybrid of parable (as the title signifies), a Freudian family romance, a Gothic tale, and a Künstlerroman in the tradition of James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” For the Kirkus Review, The Children's Home, published in 2016, was 'a one-of-a-kind literary horror story', while Two Dark Tales, published in October 2017, continues to disturb. Earlier books include three novels, a collection of prize-winning short stories and a memoir, With a Zero at its Heart, selected by the Guardian as one of its top ten books from 2014.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
April 16, 2014
Full disclosure: Charles Lambert is an all-around wonderful human being who read the manuscript for A Greater Monster before I published it, and he provided me a thoughtful promotional blurb for it, which graces the back cover. He also wrote a recommendation for me for MFA programs. Given how prolific and busy he is, I can’t say enough about his kindness. Buy his books!
Lambert is a patient, careful writer. A View from the Tower is another great achievement, a work of emotional and psychological realism. Although billed as a thriller, it is truly a literary study of grief, love, and the inconstant and unpredictable nature of relationships and connections.
Yes, indeed, there is a fascinating political narrative here undergirding the entire story. You’ll find physical danger and mystery. But A View from the Tower does not have the pace of the thriller; don’t buy this book expecting The Da Vinci Code. Expect complex characters and utterly believable reactions to brutal events. Helen, the main character, was married to Federico, a senior political figure in the Italian government. At the very beginning of the novel, he is assassinated while driving in his armored limo to work. And this unfortunately occurs just as Helen is reconnecting (literally) with her former adulterous lover and Federico’s best friend from their politically radical past. Pass a side of guilt, anyone?
The remainder of the novel works bits and pieces forward to reveal exactly why and by whom he was killed, yet what in many novels would be the foreground, here is really the backdrop for exploring how Helen deals with her husband’s murder: her feelings about him and their relationship, and her relationship to her occasional lover Giacomo. She is in some ways on a journey of discovery about herself as well as discovery that…perhaps she didn’t know Federico as well as she thought she did. The threads of who he was, who anyone is, begin to fray and unravel. I believe the greatest attribute of this work that elevates it so highly is the convincing realism. Lambert is a master at creating characters who seem real. He strikes no false note here. He never panders to likeability. These are fully fleshed out, breathing people. Flaws, insecurities, mannerisms, egos, awkwardness, everything is on display.
A View from the Tower also provides a convincing sense of setting. Call Rome another character, I enjoy they way that Lambert effortlessly weaves in subtle details of life in the capital city. You can taste the olive oil.
Truly, emotions are the star of A View from the Tower. Lambert opens a window to reveal how people feel (and act) in tragic circumstances. Highly recommended.
Lambert is a patient, careful writer. A View from the Tower is another great achievement, a work of emotional and psychological realism. Although billed as a thriller, it is truly a literary study of grief, love, and the inconstant and unpredictable nature of relationships and connections.
Yes, indeed, there is a fascinating political narrative here undergirding the entire story. You’ll find physical danger and mystery. But A View from the Tower does not have the pace of the thriller; don’t buy this book expecting The Da Vinci Code. Expect complex characters and utterly believable reactions to brutal events. Helen, the main character, was married to Federico, a senior political figure in the Italian government. At the very beginning of the novel, he is assassinated while driving in his armored limo to work. And this unfortunately occurs just as Helen is reconnecting (literally) with her former adulterous lover and Federico’s best friend from their politically radical past. Pass a side of guilt, anyone?
The remainder of the novel works bits and pieces forward to reveal exactly why and by whom he was killed, yet what in many novels would be the foreground, here is really the backdrop for exploring how Helen deals with her husband’s murder: her feelings about him and their relationship, and her relationship to her occasional lover Giacomo. She is in some ways on a journey of discovery about herself as well as discovery that…perhaps she didn’t know Federico as well as she thought she did. The threads of who he was, who anyone is, begin to fray and unravel. I believe the greatest attribute of this work that elevates it so highly is the convincing realism. Lambert is a master at creating characters who seem real. He strikes no false note here. He never panders to likeability. These are fully fleshed out, breathing people. Flaws, insecurities, mannerisms, egos, awkwardness, everything is on display.
A View from the Tower also provides a convincing sense of setting. Call Rome another character, I enjoy they way that Lambert effortlessly weaves in subtle details of life in the capital city. You can taste the olive oil.
Truly, emotions are the star of A View from the Tower. Lambert opens a window to reveal how people feel (and act) in tragic circumstances. Highly recommended.
November 12, 2013
A crippling tale of love, loss, redemption, violence, and political intrigue. THE VIEW FROM THE TOWER is a slow burning crime novel that’s more about retrospective relationships post death than the mystery surrounding the identity and motives of a killer.
Federico is a powerful and influential public servant living in Rome and married to the attractive Helen when he is gunned down running an innocuous errand. At the time of the murder Helen is in bed with former lover and close friend of Federico’s, Giacomo, an ex-terrorist and reformed gentleman – also involved in a relationship.
The news spreads fast and aspersions are cast in every direction with Helen’s life placedunder close scrutiny; her movements under a microscope for eager public viewing. Paranoia and guilt wrack her conscious and subconscious thoughts, yet she continues to be entangled in the security and familiarity of her fellow adulterer Giacomo. As the nature of the heinous crime is slowly unravelled, Helen’s world is turned upside down. Trust, a precious commodity, she learns, she can ill afford.
I wasn’t expecting such a deep seeded emotional journey into the inner sanctum of a long standing marriage and complicated character whose motivation and secrecy derailed the façade and questioned the perceived truth behind what seemed a perfectly normal and amicable relationship. Author Charles Lambert, does a masterful job of engrossing the reader into this cushioned and somewhat isolated world as Helen comes to terms with her predicament.
THE VIEW FROM THE TOWER is a literary yet psychologically charged murder mystery that slowly cuts deep to the bone.
This review also appears on my blog: http://justaguythatlikes2read.blogspo...
Federico is a powerful and influential public servant living in Rome and married to the attractive Helen when he is gunned down running an innocuous errand. At the time of the murder Helen is in bed with former lover and close friend of Federico’s, Giacomo, an ex-terrorist and reformed gentleman – also involved in a relationship.
The news spreads fast and aspersions are cast in every direction with Helen’s life placedunder close scrutiny; her movements under a microscope for eager public viewing. Paranoia and guilt wrack her conscious and subconscious thoughts, yet she continues to be entangled in the security and familiarity of her fellow adulterer Giacomo. As the nature of the heinous crime is slowly unravelled, Helen’s world is turned upside down. Trust, a precious commodity, she learns, she can ill afford.
I wasn’t expecting such a deep seeded emotional journey into the inner sanctum of a long standing marriage and complicated character whose motivation and secrecy derailed the façade and questioned the perceived truth behind what seemed a perfectly normal and amicable relationship. Author Charles Lambert, does a masterful job of engrossing the reader into this cushioned and somewhat isolated world as Helen comes to terms with her predicament.
THE VIEW FROM THE TOWER is a literary yet psychologically charged murder mystery that slowly cuts deep to the bone.
This review also appears on my blog: http://justaguythatlikes2read.blogspo...
January 1, 2014
ROME: A marriage of smoke and mirrors
Another cracking novel from Charles Lambert that transports the reader to Rome, the everyday Rome that often only the locals are 'privileged' to experience (it could be, however, not so much a privileged as a mixed blessing, read on). Mix in Italian politics, the wider Roman family, some manners, morals and mores, and you have a snapshot of the life of one marriage, full of intrigue and deception, set over the period of one week, early June 2004.
Helen, originally from the UK, is married to Federico di Stasi and, as such, also has to contend with his 'patrician' family, to wit father-in-law Fausto and matriarch mother-in-law Giulia. Helen, together with Federico and their mutual friend Giacomo have a history that binds them all, going back to Turin in the late 1970s, the era when terrorism was ripe and spreading its icy grip across Europe. The Red Brigades, a vanguard paramilitary organisation, was at the height of its power, attempting to revolutionise Italy through armed struggle. It was this group of combatants, of course, who were behind the kidnapping and murder of the politician Aldo Moro, an event mentioned in the novel; at the point in their lives, the three are on the fringes of illicit activities, and it was Giacomo who ended up in prison for a shoot-out at a bank, in which a guard was killed.
The book starts out with the killing of Federico, on his way to work in his ministry car. It is a massive event that naturally shapes the lives of all the characters. Essentially this is the story of how Helen comes to terms with the impact of his death. She begins to examine the bigger picture of not only their joint life, but also the dynamics of life within Federico's seemingly rather machiavellian family; Helen observes how Giulia increasingly asserts her authority, whilst her husband Fausto seems to crumble. On the fateful day of Federico's assassination, Giacomo had arrived from Paris with his new wife and was due to have dinner with Helen and Federico that very evening. In fact Federico was sourcing some Stilton for Giacomo when he was killed. A connection? A coincidence? Over the next few days Giacomo goes on to be a stalwart supporter as Helen learns to manage her new situation, and her suspicions around Federico's murder begin to coalesce.
Helen starts to trawl through both the past and the present - she thinks back to ascending the tower in Turin, where Giacomo took both her and Federico individually (it is the view from the Tower that gives the book its title). She chillingly remembers Giacomo's words of how the individual has to be sacrificed for the common good. With that memory comes the dawning realisation that then and now are irrevocably fused. How enmeshed they were then as a friends back in Turin in the '70s, and how things have certainly shifted in the interim, but how the past has not really been put to bed. It lingers into the present. Even the examining magistrate turns out to be the son of her favourite student from her Turin days, when she was an English teacher at Fiat. It seems she can never escape the past.
Fascinatingly, the main characters have all maintained a very young feel, almost as if they are still the people they were of their youth in the 1970s. And Mother-in-Law Giulia is in her 80s, yet still feisty and scheming, and seemingly pretty agile (there is hope for us all!). They all give off a lot of energy which is contagious.
The things I love about Charles' writing are the great style and the little vignettes that pepper the prose, whether it is the nugget of description of Helen and Federico's dream house, seen from their train compartment; or descriptions of that typical italian marble used for flooring which is ".. a sort of mottled marble, like one of those fatty salamis cut into slices and squared off into tiles" (perfect, I can visualise it now!); or the road to Ostia Antica, the Via del Mare with its dappled light and fast cars, and which is deemed to be the most dangerous road in the country. When you read Charles's work, you just KNOW you are in Italy!
Another cracking novel from Charles Lambert that transports the reader to Rome, the everyday Rome that often only the locals are 'privileged' to experience (it could be, however, not so much a privileged as a mixed blessing, read on). Mix in Italian politics, the wider Roman family, some manners, morals and mores, and you have a snapshot of the life of one marriage, full of intrigue and deception, set over the period of one week, early June 2004.
Helen, originally from the UK, is married to Federico di Stasi and, as such, also has to contend with his 'patrician' family, to wit father-in-law Fausto and matriarch mother-in-law Giulia. Helen, together with Federico and their mutual friend Giacomo have a history that binds them all, going back to Turin in the late 1970s, the era when terrorism was ripe and spreading its icy grip across Europe. The Red Brigades, a vanguard paramilitary organisation, was at the height of its power, attempting to revolutionise Italy through armed struggle. It was this group of combatants, of course, who were behind the kidnapping and murder of the politician Aldo Moro, an event mentioned in the novel; at the point in their lives, the three are on the fringes of illicit activities, and it was Giacomo who ended up in prison for a shoot-out at a bank, in which a guard was killed.
The book starts out with the killing of Federico, on his way to work in his ministry car. It is a massive event that naturally shapes the lives of all the characters. Essentially this is the story of how Helen comes to terms with the impact of his death. She begins to examine the bigger picture of not only their joint life, but also the dynamics of life within Federico's seemingly rather machiavellian family; Helen observes how Giulia increasingly asserts her authority, whilst her husband Fausto seems to crumble. On the fateful day of Federico's assassination, Giacomo had arrived from Paris with his new wife and was due to have dinner with Helen and Federico that very evening. In fact Federico was sourcing some Stilton for Giacomo when he was killed. A connection? A coincidence? Over the next few days Giacomo goes on to be a stalwart supporter as Helen learns to manage her new situation, and her suspicions around Federico's murder begin to coalesce.
Helen starts to trawl through both the past and the present - she thinks back to ascending the tower in Turin, where Giacomo took both her and Federico individually (it is the view from the Tower that gives the book its title). She chillingly remembers Giacomo's words of how the individual has to be sacrificed for the common good. With that memory comes the dawning realisation that then and now are irrevocably fused. How enmeshed they were then as a friends back in Turin in the '70s, and how things have certainly shifted in the interim, but how the past has not really been put to bed. It lingers into the present. Even the examining magistrate turns out to be the son of her favourite student from her Turin days, when she was an English teacher at Fiat. It seems she can never escape the past.
Fascinatingly, the main characters have all maintained a very young feel, almost as if they are still the people they were of their youth in the 1970s. And Mother-in-Law Giulia is in her 80s, yet still feisty and scheming, and seemingly pretty agile (there is hope for us all!). They all give off a lot of energy which is contagious.
The things I love about Charles' writing are the great style and the little vignettes that pepper the prose, whether it is the nugget of description of Helen and Federico's dream house, seen from their train compartment; or descriptions of that typical italian marble used for flooring which is ".. a sort of mottled marble, like one of those fatty salamis cut into slices and squared off into tiles" (perfect, I can visualise it now!); or the road to Ostia Antica, the Via del Mare with its dappled light and fast cars, and which is deemed to be the most dangerous road in the country. When you read Charles's work, you just KNOW you are in Italy!
January 5, 2014
I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley
Over two years ago I read “Any Human Face” by Charles Lambert and was very impressed by this, at the time, new to me author. That book was the first one in a planned trilogy about the darker side of Rome. “The View from the Tower” is the second title in that trilogy and impressed me even more than the first one did.
Just like “Any Human Face” this is a literary thriller. Even though Helen’s husband is murdered at the start of the story the emphasis isn’t immediately on why or by whom he was killed. In fact, the first part of this book appears to concentrate on Helen and her feelings of guilt, loss, confusion and denial as she takes a closer look at her husband of 30 years and the relationship she had with him. Her feelings are complicated by the fact that for all of those 30 years Helen has had an affair with her husband’s best friend, Giacomo, the man she was visiting in his hotel room while her husband was being killed a short distance away.
As Helen struggles to understand her husband’s death and the extent to which she and the people she knows may have been responsible for it, she is forced to examine her own past and peel back the years of secrets and lies. It is while Helen takes a closer look at her life, the events that took place in the past and the feelings she has for the two men in her life that the reader and Helen get an understanding of what has happened and why events took the turn they did.
This is an intricate story. While on the surface it deals with politics, revolution, violence, murder and conspiracies this is also, or predominantly, a story about relationships, the secrets we keep from each other, no matter how close we imagine ourselves to be to our partner, and the shock of discovering after 30 or more years together that you really didn’t know the person you were sharing your life with - or they you - as well as you thought you did.
The descriptions of Helen’s struggles while coming to terms with her loss are heartbreakingly real. Those short moments of forgetting that the person who was such an integral part of your life is no longer there and the renewed pain of loss when you remember, are vivid and recognisable. I also liked that there are no heroes and no real villains in this book. Actions taken for all the right reasons may still prove completely wrong under closer scrutiny. This is a brutally honest book. None of the characters are portrayed in a flattering light; all of them have their shortcomings and most of them are well aware of that fact. These characters are as real as the people we meet from day to day in our real lives. As a result it took me some time to take to any of them. By the end of the book though I had come to like most of these characters exactly because they were so brutally realistic.
This is a thriller in which the tension is insidious rather than obvious, an undertone rather than in the readers face. Even when the story appears to be only about Helen’s wildly varying emotions the tension is there, just under the surface. The reader is constantly aware that whatever is going on it won’t be something simple, and while it doesn’t appear that the narrative is steering us in the direction of a solution, that is exactly what is happening. Every conversation and action - both past and present - has significance even when they appear unrelated to the mystery of who committed the murder.
Charles Lambert has produced an intriguing thriller that kept me guessing until the very end; a story that isn’t always easy to read but very rewarding once it all comes together. This is an author who is not afraid to portray people as they are, warts and all, and manages to make his readers care about them even when their actions are questionable. I’m in awe of this author’s writing and eagerly awaiting the third book in this Rome trilogy. I couldn’t have wished for a better start to my reading year.
January 13, 2014
A thriller and a page-turner, this book also has considerable psychological depth and I particularly liked the thoughtfulness of its main characters. Moving between the viewpoints of Helen, her lover Giacomo and her friend/colleage Martin, the most obvious question posed by this novel is who killed Helen's husband Federico - but its deeper concerns are to do with relationships and this is what made it fascinating to me. "How unexpected the behaviour of the heart," Martin thinks towards the end. How strange relationships are, how unknown the other person always is/remains, and yet love can sometimes be a redeeming miracle. The story is set in Rome, a city the author obviously knows well and evokes brilliantly - eg "Centuries, millennia of statecraft and slaughter, faith and the lies and bloodletting that keep it alive. The blood-dark Tiber..." and there's also a lot of interesting stuff about Italian politics. Bravo!
September 2, 2024
This review originally published in Looking For a Good Book. Rated 2.0 of 5
From waaaay back in my Kindle queue - one of the oldest books in my ARC collection:
From the Goodreads description for this book:
Helen is in a hotel room with her lover when a gunman murders her husband, Federico, a high-level civil servant, less than a mile away. Helen soon finds herself entangled in a web of suspicion that involves those closest to her - Federico, his parents, and her friend and lover, Giacomo, an ex-terrorist with a new wife and a reinvented life in Paris. As Helen struggles to understand her husband's death and the extent to which she and the people she knows and loves may have been responsible for it, she is forced to examine her own past and the world in which she lives - and to realise (sic) innocence is a very scarce commodity.
This book is billed as a psychological thriller, and there's certainly a great deal of psychological misdirection and anticipation going on here, but as for the thriller portion...? I don't know.
The biggest issue with this book is that there are no redeeming characters. To create a thriller you need to have at least one character for whom the reader has some interest and concern - we have to want them to survive everything that's happening or about to happen to them, and author Charles Lambert does not give us that character.
If anything, that character is Federico, our victim in the early pages. Late in the book a poem by Robespierre is quoted: "The worst thing that can happen to a just man is to realise, the moment before he dies, how much he's hated by those for whom he has given his life." Is this Federico? Is this the one character with whom we bond? It's a little late for that, isn't it?
Looking for a good book? The View From the Tower by Charles Lambert is a slow moving, psychological thriller that doesn't provide a way into the hearts of any of the characters.
I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
From waaaay back in my Kindle queue - one of the oldest books in my ARC collection:
From the Goodreads description for this book:
Helen is in a hotel room with her lover when a gunman murders her husband, Federico, a high-level civil servant, less than a mile away. Helen soon finds herself entangled in a web of suspicion that involves those closest to her - Federico, his parents, and her friend and lover, Giacomo, an ex-terrorist with a new wife and a reinvented life in Paris. As Helen struggles to understand her husband's death and the extent to which she and the people she knows and loves may have been responsible for it, she is forced to examine her own past and the world in which she lives - and to realise (sic) innocence is a very scarce commodity.
This book is billed as a psychological thriller, and there's certainly a great deal of psychological misdirection and anticipation going on here, but as for the thriller portion...? I don't know.
The biggest issue with this book is that there are no redeeming characters. To create a thriller you need to have at least one character for whom the reader has some interest and concern - we have to want them to survive everything that's happening or about to happen to them, and author Charles Lambert does not give us that character.
If anything, that character is Federico, our victim in the early pages. Late in the book a poem by Robespierre is quoted: "The worst thing that can happen to a just man is to realise, the moment before he dies, how much he's hated by those for whom he has given his life." Is this Federico? Is this the one character with whom we bond? It's a little late for that, isn't it?
Looking for a good book? The View From the Tower by Charles Lambert is a slow moving, psychological thriller that doesn't provide a way into the hearts of any of the characters.
I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
January 10, 2014
The following review was posted in its entirety at my blog, caffeinatedlife.net: http://www.caffeinatedlife.net/blog/2...
I was approved of an ARC of this title from the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
The View from the Tower is an intriguing novel in that there is a lot going on underneath the surface, a lot of things that Helen had no idea about. It’s interesting and startling in that, as the reader is learning about these things from Helen’s perspective, the reader also realises that Helen was pretty much out of the loop the whole time.
However, I found that I never really connected with any of the characters; I didn't care how their story was going to wind up at the end. I found Helen to be rather frigid and just somehow found herself in a complex web of relationships. I wish the author had also fleshed out her flashback scenes with Federico because I never once got the sense that Helen truly cared enough about Federico–and vice versa?–to understand why she chose him and stayed with him for as long as she did. I just wasn’t convinced, which made the later scenes especially disconnecting.
Overall The View from the Tower was an okay read for me. The plot wasn’t as thrilling as I thought it would be and at times the story seemed to stall, it felt rather narrative-dense. However I enjoyed the segments involving Italian politics and the political scene during the 1970s.
I was approved of an ARC of this title from the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
The View from the Tower is an intriguing novel in that there is a lot going on underneath the surface, a lot of things that Helen had no idea about. It’s interesting and startling in that, as the reader is learning about these things from Helen’s perspective, the reader also realises that Helen was pretty much out of the loop the whole time.
However, I found that I never really connected with any of the characters; I didn't care how their story was going to wind up at the end. I found Helen to be rather frigid and just somehow found herself in a complex web of relationships. I wish the author had also fleshed out her flashback scenes with Federico because I never once got the sense that Helen truly cared enough about Federico–and vice versa?–to understand why she chose him and stayed with him for as long as she did. I just wasn’t convinced, which made the later scenes especially disconnecting.
Overall The View from the Tower was an okay read for me. The plot wasn’t as thrilling as I thought it would be and at times the story seemed to stall, it felt rather narrative-dense. However I enjoyed the segments involving Italian politics and the political scene during the 1970s.
May 21, 2014
This is a nicely judged tale of intrigue and sexual politics, that starts off as a thriller and morphs into a meditation on youth and loyalty and loss. The sense of place is very strong and although the politics are ever-present, they never threaten to overwhelm the more basic pleasures of life (don't read this if you're thinking of giving up cheese or wine...); in this respect, it reminded me of the Barcelona-set novels of Manuel Vazquez Montalban. Prose-wise, Lambert wears his obvious erudition lightly and puts it to good use in series of illuminating asides and observations: 'He wants, he realises, to call the woman widowed. There's no word for a woman who's lost her child, it occurs to him, perhaps because it should never happen, it goes against the natural order. But it happens all the time. The emperors make it happen, and their advisors. Perhaps there was a word for it in Latin, in Ancient Rome, he thinks, when it must have been needed all the time.'
Lovely stuff...
Lovely stuff...
September 2, 2016
I read a lot of thrillers.....and this one just did nothing for me. Not really suspenseful in any way....as one other reviewer put it, I was not glued to the edge of my seat or anything. I found it to be more of a psychological study than anything else. The writing was good, and I found the alternating third-person narration an interesting approach.
I might have enjoyed the book more if I had liked *any* of the characters except Alina. I found all of them selfish , arrogant and cruel....which may have been the point...but made it hard to root for anyone or become truly invested in the outcome.
I might have enjoyed the book more if I had liked *any* of the characters except Alina. I found all of them selfish , arrogant and cruel....which may have been the point...but made it hard to root for anyone or become truly invested in the outcome.
August 5, 2016
This is more of a quiet novel than I was expecting, but I did really enjoy it. Unlike some other slower books, I was never bored, but instead enjoyed the slow reveal of details, some of which are already known to the characters but not the reader, and some a secret to nearly everyone.
You can read an extended review on my blog:
Review: The View From the Tower
(review copy received via NetGalley)
You can read an extended review on my blog:
Review: The View From the Tower
(review copy received via NetGalley)
August 15, 2014
I won this book on the goodreads giveaway.
Unfortunately, I did not care for this book. Politics is not my thing and Italian politics even more so. If it had been just the murder and love triangle, then I may have enjoyed it more. I just couldn't get interested in the characters because the past and present political landscape did me in.
Unfortunately, I did not care for this book. Politics is not my thing and Italian politics even more so. If it had been just the murder and love triangle, then I may have enjoyed it more. I just couldn't get interested in the characters because the past and present political landscape did me in.
May 7, 2014
More a densely layered character study than intricately plotted story, this was a welcome change of pace. I started reading it in Rome, which proved evocative. The mixture of political flip flopping, spousal mystery and family intrigue was potent enough for me to carry on reading more of his novels.
December 16, 2015
I received this book as a Goodreads First Reads giveaway winner!
This book started out really slow for me (considering the subject matter). But I felt like it had potential, so I kept reading, and I'm glad I did. It came to an unexpected head and conclusion. If you're a fan of murder and international intrigue, check this one out!
This book started out really slow for me (considering the subject matter). But I felt like it had potential, so I kept reading, and I'm glad I did. It came to an unexpected head and conclusion. If you're a fan of murder and international intrigue, check this one out!
March 8, 2014
This slow and intense novel featuring characters I would never like to know had me riveted until the final, and very strange, last sentence. I'm dazzled by the psychological veracity and the control the prose exerts on revelations in the plot.
March 15, 2014
This was a good, decent thriller. The third-person narration style was interesting as it switched between the points of view of the different characters in the story, and the descriptions of the scenery were vibrant. That being said, it didn't glue me to the edge of my seat or anything.
May 17, 2014
This was a Goodreads win. I give every book a 100 pages to hook me and this one I didn't get into. With so many books to read I just do not continue if the interest isn't there.,
July 26, 2016
Creepy kind of character study, takes a couple of twists that surprise. The title's explanation is thought-provoking.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews