Return to Valetto

by Dominic Smith

A captivating and moving new novel from the international bestselling author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos.

A nearly abandoned Italian village, the family that stayed, and long-buried secrets from World War II.

On a hilltop in Umbria sits Valetto. Once a thriving village-and a hub of resistance and refuge during World War II-centuries of earthquakes, landslides and the lure of a better life have left it neglected. Only ten residents remain, including the widows Serafino - three eccentric sisters and their steely centenarian mother - who live quietly in their medieval villa. Then their nephew and grandson, Hugh, a historian, returns.

But someone else has arrived before him, laying claim to the cottage where Hugh spent his childhood summers. The unwelcome guest is the captivating and no-nonsense Elisa Tomassi, who asserts that the family patriarch, Aldo Serafino, a resistance fighter whom her own family harboured, gave the cottage to them in gratitude. Like so many threads of history, this revelation unravels a secret - a betrayal, a disappearance and an unspeakable act of violence - that has impacted Valetto across generations. Who will answer for the crimes of the past?

Dominic Smith's Return to Valetto is a riveting journey into one family's long-buried story, a page-turning excavation of the ruins of history and our commitment to justice in a fragile world. For fans of Amor Towles, Anthony Doerr and Jess Walter, it is a deeply human and transporting testament to the possibility of love and understanding across gaps of all kinds - even time.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Italy, Book Club, Historical, Audiobook, Literary Fiction

336 pages, Hardcover

First published June 13, 2023

About the author

Dominic grew up in Sydney, Australia and now lives in Seattle, Washington. He is the author of five novels, including The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, a New York Times bestseller and a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. Dominic's writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Chicago Tribune, Texas Monthly, The Australian, and The New York Times. He has received literature fellowships from the Australia Council for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches writing in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. More information can be found on his website: www.dominicsmith.net.

Reviews

[Sujoya - theoverbookedbibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5⭐️

“We want history to be a unified narrative, a causal, linear plot that cantilevers across the centuries, but I’ve always pictured it like the filigree of a wrought-iron gate, our unaccountable lives twisting and swooping against a few vertical lines.”

As the story begins, we meet social historian and academic, Hugh Fisher on his way to his late mother's ancestral home in Valetto a (fictional) crumbling town in Umbria. Hugh, a widower, was bequeathed a cottage on the premises of the family villa by his mother Hazel, where he plans to spend the next six months while on sabbatical from his teaching job at a college in Michigan. Once a thriving town of population three thousand, the post-war years and natural calamities ( such as the earthquake of 1971) resulted in a large-scale exodus of families and at present boasts of a population of ten full-time residents among whom are Hugh’s aunts – the Serafino widows -Violet, Rose, and Iris-and their mother, Hugh’s Nonna Ida who is planning a huge celebration for her hundredth birthday, inviting friends family from all across the world to join in the celebrations.
However, he was informed by his aunts that a northerner by the name of Elissa Tomassi has laid claim to the cottage based on a letter gifting the same to her family written by his maternal grandfather Aldo Serafino. Aldo who was helping the partisan resistance, had left his family to go into hiding in 1944, his fate unknown to his family. It turns out that Elisa’s family has another connection to the Serafinos. Elisa’s mother Alessia was one of the refugees the Serafino family had sheltered during WWII, a part of the family history of which Hugh was unaware. Alessia and Hazel had been friends during that period and Alessia had also been close to Ada. While the family and Elisa try to resolve the conflict over the ownership of the cottage, Hugh and Elise uncover much about the history of the crumbling town, the residents and family history including a betrayal and a particularly traumatic incident that impacted both families across generations. As the narrative progresses it is up to Hugh to decide whether to let go of past injustices or see that those responsible for inflicting pain on his family are finally held accountable.

With a cast of interesting characters, vivid imagery and an engaging narrative, Return to Valetto by Dominic Smith is a beautifully written, captivating novel. The author masterfully weaves the history of a town and its people, the customs, food and culture of the community into a rich and absorbing narrative. I enjoyed getting to know the characters, especially Hugh’s aunts. The romantic relationship track felt a tad forced and wasn’t quite necessary, but this did not detract from my overall experience with this novel. The story is presented from Hugh’s first-person PoV and overall, I did like how the plot is structured. Though the story takes a while to take off (around the twenty percent mark), the story progressed at an even pace thereafter and I found this novel hard to put down. This is my first time reading a novel by this author and I am sure it won’t be my last.

Many thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for the DRC of this novel. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

I paired my reading with the audio narration by the immensely talented Edoardo Ballerini who does an excellent job transporting the reader to Valetto, making the setting and the story come alive. Many thanks to Macmillan Audio for the ALC.

[Canadian Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Italia. I feel like I’ve been wrapped in a bed of linguini.

Dominic takes us to the town of Valetto part of Umbria, which is nestled into a mountain in Northern Italy. A town that has been decimated by earthquakes and has a population of 10. Hugh has returned, as he has for many years, to spend time with his elderly aunts and to celebrate his grandmother’s 100th birthday. But when he arrives, there is a squatter in his stone cottage with the claim it now belongs to her, along with a letter dating back over 60 years.
A step back in time. A mother he never really knew. A mystery of 2 girls missing for 3 days- decades ago. A father who abandoned his family during the war. Secrets revealed.

The descriptive writing, beautiful. The older aunts, irresistibly quirky. Who doesn’t love the bickering of sisters and aunts and big loud Italian families. And don't forget - the food.
4.5⭐️

I also highly recommend The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic

[Angela M · Rating 5 out of 5]

The main reason I chose to read this book was Dominic Smith’s beautiful writing and intriguing novel The Last Painting of Sara de Vos. I also love stories that take place in Italy . All of my grandparents were born there and when I traveled there a number of years ago, I loved everything about it. As it turned out, I loved everything about this novel, too - the easy to connect with characters, a moving story line linking the past with the present, writing that transported me to Italy again.

Historian Hugh Fisher returns to the near deserted village of his boyhood summers, representative of some small Italian villages and towns today. It’s his mother’s birthplace and the location of the villa where his grandmother and widowed aunts still live. There are few people left in Valetto, but it’s a place full of life, secrets and things unknown from the days of WWII. I found it to be a captivating read as Hugh discovers the secrets, resolves unanswered questions, and seeks an acknowledgment of the wrongs done to his family even after decades. There are some difficult passages when he discovers the lengths to which a Fascist from the village went to to obtain information about resistors. Heartbreaking and cruel.

Ultimately, it’s a story of grief, of carrying the burdens of that past, about the love of family, and moving forward in spite of the past or maybe because of it. Italy, history, family secrets, fabulous characters - my kind of book.

I received a copy of this from Farrar, Straus and Giroux through Edelweiss.

[Brenda · Rating 4 out of 5]

As historian, Hugh, arrived in Valetto, a small, almost abandoned village where he'd spent a lot of his childhood, his aunts and grandmother, the Serafino widows, waited for him. But the cottage he was going to stay in, where he and his mother had stayed when they visited, was already occupied by an interloper. Elisa Tomassi had declared Aldo Serafino had gifted to cottage to Elisa's mother because of their care of him during the war. But was that the truth?

Ida, Hugh's grandmother, and Aldo's wife, was due to turn 100 in a few short weeks and she declared she wanted a party. All the old residents of Valetto would come, and many others. With no restrictions on how many she could invite, Ida sent invitations far and wide. Meanwhile, Hugh accompanied Elisa back to Milan and her mother's side. Elisa's mother had been one of the orphaned children who'd been housed in the Serafino villa during the war, and she and Hugh's mother had been good friends. But for three days, back when the children were eight and nine, they were missing. What had happened during that time when the resistance, the fascists and the Germans occupied the area?

I had a hard time getting into Return to Valetto by Aussie author Dominic Smith, and almost abandoned it a couple of times. But I persevered and I'm glad I did. Once I reached part 2 in the story, my interest was heightened and I was completely invested. A beautifully written story with great characters - the Serafino widows were outstanding. Dry wit, stubborn natures, and fun when they wanted to be. Another favourite character was Milo. He'd lived and worked in Valetto for most of his life, and knew everyone and everything. The generations were well crafted as well, with it being easy to differentiate the ages between the older characters, down to Susan, Hugh's daughter. Recommended.

With thanks to Allen & Unwin AU for my ARC to read in exchange for an honest review.

[PattyMacDotComma · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5★
“The Fiat gave out little adenoidal shunting noises whenever we climbed a hill, and Milo patted the side of his door with tender encouragement. There was no rearview mirror, but a laminated portrait of the Madonna had been glued to the sun-bleached dash for our navigation and protection.”

Welcome back to Valetto, the site of an ancient Etruscan village built not on bedrock but on volcanic tufa, which is crumbling away so badly that the only way to get to the village is across a footbridge. People leave their cars (or tour buses) at the end of the footbridge and walk from there.

“The Saint’s Staircase hangs down from the cliffs of Valetto, spiraling into thin air. It’s all that remains of the house in Umbria where a disciple of St. Francis of Assisi lived until 1695, when a massive earthquake cleaved a third of the town into the canyons below.”

When Hugh Fisher, the narrator, was a boy, he was terrified on the staircase by a dark, ominous figure coming towards him. He knows that the thick fog that sweeps through the valley into which the staircase hangs was probably reflecting his own shadow back at him, but the memory still haunts him.

Many houses are abandoned, but there are still some very old residents, including Hugh’s late mother’s family. She was a difficult, troubled woman who raised Hugh in Michigan in the US, a far cry from the Italian countryside. He doesn’t miss her.

The woman he grieves for is his wife, Clare, who died six years ago. He seems unable to get over her death. His adult daughter, Susan, now teases him about the women who eye him with interest at the university where he’s an historian. He’s uninterested.

He explains to someone in Valetto why he’s there for an extended stay.

“‘I didn’t realize it when I asked for the sabbatical, but I also came back to Valetto looking for some trace of who I used to be. As a boy.
. . .

So happy. At least that’s how I remember it. I’d leave my parents fighting in the suburbs of the Midwest and I’d come here to be with my crazy aunts and my fearless grandmother in a medieval villa. They treated me like a prince. I lived in the cottage by myself, ate mortadella sandwiches over the sink, . . . exploring the valley and playing chess with old men in the piazza. The happiest I’ve ever been.’”

His mother’s three sisters, the colourful old Serafino aunts and their 99-year-old mother, Ida, live in the crumbling villa in separate apartments. The equally crumbling cottage is still there, which is where Hugh plans to work.

Nothing is simple. The author takes us back to World War Two, the fascists, the partisans, and the children sent to Valetto to hide from the war when Hugh’s mother was a child. She and one of the girls, Alessia, became close friends, and something mysterious happened to them all those decades ago, but nobody has ever learned what.

“I didn’t know what [had been done] to my mother or to Alessia, but I knew, from my mother’s words, from her tone, that it was the kind of harm that cuts a human life in two, separates it into the ‘before’ and ‘after.’”

Alessia’s daughter, a chef, has come to Valetto and set herself up in the cottage, saying she has inherited it. How and why? Grandmother Ida had taught the child Alessia to cook, and Alessia taught her daughter. That doesn’t explain an ‘inheritance’.

I had just seen a short documentary about the old deserted Italian towns like this where people are enticed with a price of One Euro to buy a home! The author talks about these villages, the homes abandoned with places still set at the table (as they showed in the documentary), the people’s history, their wartime challenges with little food, and the fracture in the community between the fascist sympathisers and the partisans.

“So many of the vanishing towns I’d visited had experienced a mass exodus after the war. The Italian economic miracle of the 1950s drew people to the cities in waves, but I’ve often wondered if their complicity with two fascist regimes also sent millions looking for a fresh start. There was a hill town in Calabria where the entire population of a thousand left on a single day in May 1945, within a week of the final surrender and many years after the most recent landslide or earthquake.”

The grandmother’s hundredth birthday celebration is something else again. I couldn’t imagine pulling it off as they did in those circumstances, but I did believe those people could have done it.

It’s certainly not a happy-go-lucky read, but it’s very real and feels as if it’s written from someone’s newly-discovered journals. I enjoyed the story and the people who cling to memories and traditions.

Very satisfying and many thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the preview copy from which I’ve quoted. It’s still available on NetGalley until July 31.
https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/boo...

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[Phrynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess this book could be classified as an historical romance. There is certainly a lot of history and there is a romance although the two characters involved never became substantial enough for me to be affected by it.

Events take place in a small town called Valetto, now only occupied by ten citizens, one of whom is celebrating her 100th birthday with a big celebration. One unwelcome guest, Elisa Tomassi, brings back the horrors of the war and the secrets of the Resistance movement in the town. It is an interesting account of the way things were, but I felt the author succumbed to his own pleasure in writing lengthy descriptive passages. I was overwhelmed with words.

There was a good story in there though trying to get out and I enjoyed that. Three stars for me.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I learned that Dominic Smith had a written a new novel, I knew that I had to read it. He has been on my must-read list since I was swept away by his writing in The Last Painting of Sara de Vos. And once again Smith has done it: combining wonderfully written characters, carefully constructed plot and some gorgeous prose, he has created a story of Italy that takes in much of the history of the past eighty years.

Hugh Fisher is an historian; his recent book on the subject of abandoned towns and villages and their history. His mother was Italian and he has aunts and a grandmother in Valetto, a very small village in Umbria. He is somewhat adrift at present having lost his mother and wife in recent years. He teaches and writes. His daughter is in graduate school. And he is now on sabbatical, planning to spend much of it in Valetto.

This novel strikes me as an historian’s take on a family history. There is so much here about how we humans look at the world and people around us, though not in any pedantic way. It just flows through the conversations and observations. There is also much thought given to proper attention to the past and the future. There is a line drawn within the family and village from the days of WWII to the present and exactly how they connect through Hugh’s maternal family, the Serafinos.

I strongly recommend The Return to Valetto to those who enjoy literary fiction.

A copy of this book was provided by Farrar, Straus and Giroux through NetGalley.

[Andrew Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a short space of time Hugh has lost his wife and also his mother, two of the most important people in his life. He’s struggling, and though he’s had professional counselling it hasn’t really helped him. Now he’s decided to travel to Perugia, Italy, from his American home. He’ll stay for six months with his elderly grandmother and three aunts, in a medieval villa where he often spent the summers of his youth. Hugh’s daughter supports his decision, hoping it will stop him from continuing to wallow in the past.

The villa is situated in a largely abandoned village, on the top of an elevated piece of lad which itself in is the centre of a valley. It’s like a small island, with steep drop-offs on all sides (note: the author based the imaginary village of Valetto on the real life town of Civita di Bagnoregio, situated in the neighbouring province of Lazio). Hugh plans to spend his time in a small cottage he’d been bequeathed by his mother, located in the grounds of the villa. But upon his arrival he discovers that the cottage already has an occupant, a lady who claims that Hugh’s grandfather had previously gifted the property to her family.

There’s a good deal more to this story involving preparations for a grand birthday celebration and events of past, largely those occurring during the German occupation of the area. But in its essence, it’s a novel about loss and the grief and renewal; it a story about Hugh and whether it’s possible for him to find something that will free him from the shackles of his own broken-heartedness. It is, in truth, a magnificent tale, full of interesting characters of wonderful descriptions of the place and its history. I loved it from start to finish and I’m already missing the story and its people very badly.

The author’s last novel The Last Painting of Sara de Vos was one of my favourite reads of 2016, so I was very eager hands on a copy of this one. It certainly didn’t disappoint and is sure to be one of my favourite reads of 2023.

My thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for supplying a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Return to Valetto by Dominic Smith

Synopsis /

A nearly abandoned Italian village, the family that stayed, and long-buried secrets from World War II.

On a hilltop in Umbria sits Valetto. Once a thriving village-and a hub of resistance and refuge during World War II-centuries of earthquakes, landslides and the lure of a better life have left it neglected. Only ten residents remain, including the widows Serafino - three eccentric sisters and their steely centenarian mother - who live quietly in their medieval villa. Then their nephew and grandson, Hugh, a historian, returns.

But someone else has arrived before him, laying claim to the cottage where Hugh spent his childhood summers. The unwelcome guest is the captivating and no-nonsense Elisa Tomassi, who asserts that the family patriarch, Aldo Serafino, a resistance fighter whom her own family harboured, gave the cottage to them in gratitude. Like so many threads of history, this revelation unravels a secret - a betrayal, a disappearance and an unspeakable act of violence - that has impacted Valetto across generations. Who will answer for the crimes of the past?

My Thoughts /

4 ⭐ rounded up to 4.5

History is irony on the move….it is also a flood of coincidences, overlaps and omens.

I had only just finished reading Dominic Smith's novel, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos when I received a notification from my local library that this book was currently on hold for me, awaiting pickup. What a dilemma. Whilst I did enjoy 'some' things about The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, I didn't love it, and I wasn't sure I was ready to dive in headfirst straight into another Smith novel. But, since I had put Return to Valetto on hold and, since there were another 122 others on the list after me waiting to read it, I thought I had better crack on and read it toot sweet.

In this story, Smith takes readers to Northern Italy, where we visit the entirely imaginary town called Umbria. From the very beginning we are again blessed with Smith's beautiful descriptive prose.

The Saint's Staircase hangs down from the cliffs of Valetto, spiralling into thin air. It's all that remains of the house in Umbria where a disciple of St. Francis of Assisi lived until 1695, when a massive earthquake cleaved a third of the town into the canyons below. Because Valetto sits on a pedestal of volcanic rock - an island jutting up from the valley floor - the spiral staircase appears to float, a twist of wrought iron eerily suspended between the chestnut groves below and the twelfth-century church spire above.

Return to Valetto is packed with evocative descriptions such as this. Even though Umbria and its small crumbling town of Valetto are fictional, by the end of this novel, you'll be wishing you could visit there. Once a thriving, bustling town, teeming with people and activities, now, only ten residents call the village home.

Historian, Professor Hugh Fisher was travelling to Italy and to his hometown of Valetto after a two year absence. With a special interest in abandoned and vanishing towns and villages, Hugh had written a book called Famous for Dying: A Social History of Abandoned Italy and was returning to Italy to revisit some of the places he'd previously researched.

History is irony on the move….it is also a flood of coincidences, overlaps and omens.

By way of background, Hugh’s mother, Hazel, grew up in Valetto before moving to America and settling down and raising a family. Hugh spent much of his childhood in Valetto living with his mother’s three sisters and Grandmother. In part returning for work, but also to attend his grandmother’s one hundredth birthday celebrations, Hugh arrives at his family's villa only to be greeted by his aunts, all in a flap. The reason for his aunts' tension Hugh discovers, is that the little cottage nestled in behind the family villa - the one which had been left to Hugh by his mother, is currently being occupied by a woman called Elisa Tomassi. It seems that Elisa has laid claim to the cottage and has no intention of leaving. She claims that she has a letter which was written by Hugh’s grandfather, Aldo Serafino during the Second World War, in which Aldo writes that it is his dying wish to leave the cottage to Elisa’s family. We learn that after Aldo disappeared in 1944, he'd joined a partisan group and, Elisa's grandparents hid and protected him during that time. They also cared for Aldo when he fell ill, and they continued to provide care and shelter to him right up to the time he passed away.

The author has given us a very detailed picture of the Serafino family history, the villa, the cottage, and its surrounds; as well as the connection between the two families. Smith also weaves in themes of abandonment and loss, as well as family matriarchy, old family ties and unearthed secrets from the war. Smith has no trouble transporting the reader to the time and place of his choosing. You can almost hear the creaks and groans from the crumbling ruins and the anguish in the voices of Hugh's aunts as you read.

Esteemed friends and clients,
Now that the iron-knuckled grip of winter is around our throats, it's worth remembering that we have much to be thankful for across this valley. Time with family during Christmas, the aromas of roasting chestnuts, your grandmother's favourite recipes and, naturally, the trusses, beams and roof tiles about your heads.

You'll not want to put this down, but I recommend you treat it like chocolate. A little at a time and savour each delicious bite.

Living in the heart of those who remain means never dying.

[Faith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hugh is an American historian visiting the all-but-abandoned town of Valetto, Italy. It was the childhood home of his deceased mother and is still the home of his grandmother and her three remaining daughters. The grandmother is about to celebrate her 100th birthday. In addition to planning a huge party, the family has to contend with a woman, Elissa, who claims ownership of one of the family’s houses.

The relationship between Hugh and Elissa was so predictable that I kept hoping that the author would do something unexpected with the story. I did not foresee what the big secret stemming from WWII would be. The book was pleasant, short and held my interest, much like the other book that I read by this author. One thing about his writing style that got in my nerves was his excessive description of irrelevant details. For example, describing Hugh’s daughter getting off of a plane: “honey-brown hair in a braid, day pack over one shoulder, Guatemalan-print laptop case under one arm, stainless steel water canteen in hand, noise-canceling headphones around her neck.” Too much. 3.5 stars

If you listen to the audiobook I recommend listening to the discussion between the narrator and the author that comes after the end of the book. It contains interesting information about each of the men.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

[Michael Burke · Rating 4 out of 5]

About twenty-five hundred ghost towns dot the landscape in Italy, abandoned and forsaken for one reason or another.

Hugh Fisher’s wife died of cancer six years ago and his life has been running nearly as empty and neglected as these towns he now studies and analyzes in his cold scholarly works.

Valetto is one of those nearly abandoned places. A devastating earthquake in 1971 drove everyone out but Hugh’s grandmother and three quirky aunts. Hugh is visiting from America to celebrate his grandmother’s 100th birthday and to settle a legal issue his family is having with a property claim. A woman, Elisa Tomassi, has arrived with a letter from Hugh’s long-deceased grandfather. The letter seems to will a cottage on the estate to Elisa’s family.

This is a ghost story. The ghosts are not of the Vincent Price or John Carpenter scope, but of the memories of loss. There are the physical structures whispering of lives in the past. There are survivors’ sharp, ingrained pains of regret. Above all, an ancient villain was never brought to justice and his crime effectively crushed the spirits of his victims. How to deal with the long ago…

The past is never dead. It's not even past. – Faulkner

Dominic Smith has captured a shot of Italy from its World War II aftermath to now. The rebuilding of Hugh’s character is a little less satisfying with a romantic relationship which seemed a bit contrived. The outer world, though– the cobwebs and echoes of lives uprooted– is very much worth the trip.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and to NetGalley for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. #ReturnToValetto #NetGalley

[Dale Harcombe · Rating 4 out of 5]

On a hilltop in Umbria is Valetto, a one thriving village a ahub for the resistance during World War Two. Earthquakes landslides and people leaving for a better life means it is now neglected. The three Serafino sisters, all widows, still live there along with their mother, soon to turn 100. Hugh an historian returns to the cottage where he spent many happy childhood summers. But someone else who insists they have a claim to the cottage is already in residence. Elisa Tomassi claims the family patriarch Aldo Serafino, a resistance fighter her family harboured, willed the cottage to her family in gratitude. And what of the events that shaped more than one life? Will the family be able to bring events of the past to light and will the crimes be answered?
This is a beautifully written story. The setting and characters are well defined. Lyrical prose gently leads the reader along this journey as the truth of events from the past are uncovered. A couple of things were wrapped up a little too neatly for this reader but, all in all, a really good read.
Thanks go to Allen & Unwin for my copy to read and review. Very glad to have read this one and recommended to all who like historical fiction with good characters, interesting setting and a secret or two that is brought to light. A story of family and community.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

A highlight of my reading year so far. With an irresistible premise I had high expectations for this book, and I'm happy to say it delivered in every way. I knew I was onto a winner when I had to chide myself for all the highlighting, especially in the first half. This book is sure to have wide appeal.

Hugh Fisher, an American historian and widower, has arrived in Valetto at the start of his sabbatical. This almost abandoned Umbrian village, sitting precariously on a column of tufa rising from the valley floor, is the ancestral home of his recently deceased mother, Hazel Serafino, and he spent many of his childhood summers there with her in the small stone cottage at the rear of the family's medieval villa. He plans to base himself there while he conducts further research on his specialist academic topic - the vanishing towns and villages of Italy. But in the short-term he is there to help prepare for and celebrate his grandmother Ida's 100th birthday.

Before he has even arrived though, Hugh's plans are dealt a blow by an email from his Aunt Iris (one of 3 widow-aunts living in the villa), advising him of an interloper - a squatter - at the cottage left to him by his mother. The so-called squatter is a renowned Milanese chef by the name of Elisa Tommasi, and she has evidence of a strong claim on the cottage.

And so the first part of the book is focussed on the property dispute. Families being as they are, the Serafinos present a united front to the opposition of Elisa's claim, while behind the façade they are squabbling amongst themselves. However one unifying point is that the dispute is to be kept from Ida, to avoid the risk of spoiling the centenarian's birthday. But as the details of Elisa's claim are learned and understood, a deep, dark secret from Valletto's wartime past comes to light, threatening to divide the family and the local community.

This is a story of grief, loss, family, secrets, ageing and ultimately, reconciliation, told by Dominic Smith with a generous amount of warmth and humour. His writing is sublime (thus all the highlighting) and paints such a romantic picture of this faded but still dignified village and its inhabitants. I absolutely adored it and will read it again one day.

With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an uncorrected proof to read and review.

[Blaine DeSantis · Rating 4 out of 5]

For his 6th novel, Dominic Smith takes us to the fictional abandoned Umbrian town of Valetto, Italy. This is a tale of family, mystery, secrets and follow the interconnecting stories of an abandoned town, a woman's 100th birthday party, and a secret that has laid hidden since two young girls were found wandering in a chestnut grove after having gone missing for three days. Hugh Fisher is an American Historian who has returned to Valetto to spend time living in a cottage his mother resided in prior to her death. It is there we meet his soon to be 100-year old grandmother, and his three aunts reside (4 of the 10 who remain in the city). Unfortunately he is greeted by Milanese chef Elisa Tomassi who claims to have a letter written by Hugh's long dead grandfather and in which he wants to give this cottage to Elisa's mother for all she did for him during WW2. The Serafino sisters oppose this and doubt the story behind the letter, as well as the document itself. Aldo Serafino was a partisan during WW2 and had to hastily leave Valetto and worked in the Italian Alps helping his compatriots fight the Nazi's plus the Italian Fascist allies. Two years later Aldo has died and the Serafino family has heard nothing from or about him for over 70 years until Elisa arrives with the letter. The letter prompts a family investigation and eventually they discover the truth about the mysterious disappearance. The truth resides in the memory of the two ladies, one dead and the other Elisa's mother, as well as an aged pensioner now living in Rome. And it is at Ida Serafino's 100th Birthday party that secrets are revealed to all who gather for what was to be a glorious gala. World War 2 is over but even today old passions and history comes to the forefront in this dazzling work by Smith. Smith's knowledge of Italy and Italians hits and mark, and it is rare that any books are written about how everyday Italians both coped with and suffered during that war. Smith tackles with remarkable sensitivity and crafts a novel that is a worthy addition to his body of works.

[Kerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who knew that Italy has over 2500 abandoned villages and has one of the highest rate of earthquakes next to Japan. Not me. This book was so, so good. Just a fantastic story that curved in many of the places I knew it must but still so wonderfully told and crafted and read by Edoardo Ballerini it could not have been more perfect. I listened to so many parts 2 or 3 times. I'll put together some quotes and write a longer review soon but if you love a good story about an Italian family and an immersive Italian place (even though it is fictional) I would highly recommend this audio. I picked it up as someone recommended it on Goodreads and I have been hunting for Ballerini telling another Italian novel ever since Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter. This was all that and more. Really sorry to see it end.

[Lorna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Return to Valetto is a moving, atmospheric novel exploring grief, generational trauma, and long-buried World War II secrets against the backdrop of a crumbling Italian hilltop village in Umbria, Italy. One is enthralled with the evocative descriptions of the Italian countryside and the sense of place by Dominic Smith. It is perched on a pedestal of volcanic rock with only ten remaining residents. And the protagonist, Hugh Fisher is an American historian specializing in studying abandoned and vanishing towns. Professor Fisher is mourning the recent losses of both his wife and mother. And when Hugh returns to Valetto to claim the small stone cottage left to him by his late mother, a place that he remembers fondly every summer as a child, he finds that the cottage is occupied by Elisa Tomassi, a chef from Milan, who claims her family was promised the home for helping Hugh’s grandfather during World War II. And complicating matters, the remaining population of Valetto includes his grandmother about to celebrate her hundredth birthday, as well as his three eccentric aunts. But at the heart of this novel is that Elisa’s arrival forces the family to confront a dark, unresolved legacy from the wartime resistance and the disappearance of Hugh’s grandfather. It is gratifying reading to see how a family reaches across a century of betrayal, abandonment, and history to heal.

“Italians have been paying homage to their geological overlords since the beginning. But somehow Orvieto stood intact and preserved, presiding over Umbria from its lofty perch. Less than an hour away, my mother’s ancestral town had been sliding into the valley for more than three centuries.”

“I never quite understood why no one had cleaned up the ruins or rescued what was still intact, but I’ve since seen the same thing in dozens of abandoned paces—a barrage of objects people left behind, a monument to the day and the hour when everything changed.”

“This was the spot where my mother used to sit during her visits, reading Agatha Christie novels and drinking strong negronis under the wisteria and bougainvillea.”

[Theresa Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Few books have made me want to crawl inside and live there but Return to Valetto invoked those feelings intensely. The way it made me feel is akin to Still Life by Sarah Winman and we all know how much I love that novel. Dominic Smith is an author I enjoy reading; I’d definitely say he’s a favourite. I haven’t yet read one of his novels that I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed. Return to Valetto has eclipsed The Last Painting of Sara De Vos as my favourite by him. There is so much atmosphere within this novel, you become truly immersed into the setting and the Italian culture, both the food and the family.

‘I thought of Luigi Barzini writing about the Italian family, where, he said, you could always turn for consolation, help, advice, provisions, loans, weapons, allies and accomplices. There was something primal and unconditional about Italian familial love, but also something brutal and ponderous, a beautifully made millstone around your neck. Elisa Tomassi, it occurred to me, was here to collect a debt, to balance the historical ledger by honouring her grandparents’ legacy, but she’d also run aground in Milan, I sensed, and had come here to find solace, reclaim some space to think and start over.’

The story itself was really interesting. Hugh has returned to his family’s villa in Valetto for a six-month sabbatical to write and present some history lectures. Upon arriving, his elderly aunts and grandmother are all up in arms about a woman who has simply moved into his cottage in the villa, claiming that it was left to her family by Hugh’s grandfather after the second world war. And so begins the unravelling of a decades old mystery that entwines two families. It’s a well-paced novel, a beautiful balance of character and plot.

‘In my book, I’d written that Italians walk through their own histories every day, passing the ravages and triumphs of bygone days. There are streets and hillsides where Roman and Etruscan ruins butt up against papal and nationalist monuments. And in dozens of empty towns and villages, the new settlement was made a short distance away, in plain sight of the original devastation or abandonment. Walk away and don’t look back was the least Italian idea I could imagine. In fact, looking back seemed to be the main point of leaving something behind.’

I do need to make special mention of the history aspect. Hugh is an historian and as such, there is a lot of history imbued throughout the story. I loved this, so much, Hugh’s historical gaze a mirror of my own. The dwelling on objects and lingering within places is exactly what I love to do, and I couldn’t get enough of these passages. They were written with beauty and true meaning.

‘I remember holding it against them for years, that they failed to see how these rooms were not only my boyhood sanctuary but wormholes through time, places where you might inventory the hours and the minutes of other people’s lives as precisely as a crime scene. Here was the glass someone drank from right before the earth shook and the ceiling collapsed. Here was the aspirin for the headache or fever, and you couldn’t help wondering why it had never been swallowed.’

Return to Valetto was pure bliss to read, like a balm to my soul. Highly recommended and don’t be surprised to see this one popping up at the end of the year in my top reads for 2023.

Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dominic Smith's insatiable appetite results in works of wide flung diversity backed by impeccable research. In this case, his curiosity led him to Etruscan history, including architecture and food.

Here we find Hugh Fisher, an academic widower on sabbatical, staying with Ida, his grandmother, and his three aunts in their crumbling medieval villa in an even more crumbling town in Umbria that is barely inhabited, and giving the occasional guest lecture. Smith uses this setup to explore the phenomena of towns in this less glamorous province, that have been virtually gutted thanks to various causes such as earthquake and the so-called Italy's economic miracle of the 1950's that witnessed huge exoduses and urban influx after WWII. Hugh has already published a book on this subject -- deserted towns, fascinated by some that were vacated due to earthquake, leaving them a version of a modern day Pompeii ("... looking for clues about the lives that had once animated [these rooms]...". ("All these rooms had a damp mineral smell that made me lightheaded and that I have always associated with the sorrows of the past.")

As preparations proceed for Ida's 100th birthday, he unearths secrets relating to events from WWII that upend his world, and it is in these plot points that Smith really shines. I have noted before that that war has been so thoroughly mined and outrage can only be reached in works of originality, well written and immersive, and he has managed to do that. Highly recommended.

[Anita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Valetto, an Umbrian hill town of 10 full-time inhabitants most over the age of 70, precipitately teeters on disintegrating tufa, accessed by a footbridge over a plunging ravine. It has barely survived Italy’s seismic proclivities, and like the faded gilt of the cover illustration suggests, has faded into decrepitude.
Widower Hugh Fisher is the first character to return to Valetto: he is an historian on sabbatical, author of ‘Famous for Dying: a social history of abandoned Italy’. He had spent childhood summers spoiled by his aunts the 3 resident Serafino widows who, together with their 99 year old mother, reside in a medieval villa. Hugh now intends to dwell in the attached stone cottage left to him by his mother. Grandmother Ida, former restauranteur of Il Ritorno (the Return) and keeper of the family bible of recipes is uncontrolledly inviting all and sundry to her upcoming birthday party. The eldest aunt, Violet, is incongruously a vocal fan of television wrestling and darts programs. Rose is a charity worker and sponsor of numerous children. Iris, a former professor, is involved in a missing persons and serial killers case project.
At times a volatile and disparate sisterhood, they are all agreed on one thing – the squatter who has recently descended on the cottage must go. There is a claim that this cottage had been promised by Hugh’s grandfather Aldo, a WWII partisan who fled the Fascists and the Germans leaving behind his wife and 4 daughters in a ‘crumbling town without prospects’, to another family that harboured and comforted him on his deathbed. The squatter proffers a letter purportedly written by Aldo many decades earlier creating turmoil and triggering revelations of the past. The questions are legal and moral - which family was on the wrong side of history?
After reading the letter Ida encourages Hugh to accompany the squatter Elisa north to document Aldo’s final days and resting place. There he meets Elisa’s mother, Alessia. who had been a child refugee at the villa during the war, been taught to cook by Ida, and mysteriously went missing for three days with Hugh’s mother at the time. Alessia also returns to Valetto for the birthday party, her story and 50 years of letters withheld from both families eases her overwhelming burden of silence but painfully stirs up the past.
To these families food is important, and the third character to return to Valetto is
about to realise that revenge is the dish best served cold.

With evocative turns of phrase, meticuously depicted characters, a palpable setting and an Italian soap opera worthy storyline ‘Return to Valetto’ is a delight to read.

Thanks to Allen & Unwin for an advanced reading copy.

[Suzy]

This book should have everything I want in a good read! Author I've enjoyed before, one of my favorite audiobook narrators and set in Italy. Plus, almost universal good ratings/reviews. Unfortunately, it's not drawing me in at the moment, so I'm setting it aside.

Why I'm reading this: I loved Smith's The Last Painting of Sara de Vos narrated by Edoardo Ballerini, so I jumped on this one also narrated by Ballerini.

[Janelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a beautiful and engrossing read. Hugh Fisher returns to an almost abandoned Umbrian village where his 100yo grandmother and three widowed aunts live. His mother is dead and he’s also lost his wife. There is a deep sense of place and history and there’s a mystery from back in the war when his mother was a child and went missing for three days with another girl. It is a slow build but so well done that it was hard to look away. The characters are well developed and the whole story is well crafted.

[Lilisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Secrets long held are the catalyst for current day family drama that plays out in the tiny village of Valetto in Italy. Hugh Fisher returns to Valetto, where his deceased mother was born, and where he spent several summers as a young boy. Hoping to get a grip on his life, he’s taken a six-month sabbatical from his U.S. college teaching job to spend time with his grandmother and three aunts who live in the family villa and live in the cottage his mother left him on the family property. But Elisa Tomassi, who says Hugh’s grandfather had gifted her family the cottage is occupying it. The tangled web dates back to World War II and the secrets long held from that time. The storyline worked well, character development well mapped out, and the treatment of how letting go is so challenging - whether it’s pain, fear, grief, anger, or regret. The book has a great sense of place and time. The pace in the first third of the book was a bit slow but it picked up soon after and kept me engaged right to the end. Overall a good read. Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

[John Calia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn’t expect to love this book—but I did. It begins at a leisurely pace, with dense descriptions of the landscape, the characters, and their daily routines. At first, I found this style almost prosaic. Yet, as the story unfolded, I realized how necessary that immersion was. The details anchor us in an abandoned Italian village of just ten inhabitants—three of them the narrator’s aunts and another his grandmother—whose history and culture shape every moment.

Told in the first person by a recently widowed professor on sabbatical, the novel follows his return to his mother’s birthplace to celebrate his grandmother’s 100th birthday. Untethered by grief, he slowly discovers a renewed sense of self within this quiet community.

The narrative explores love and loss, celebration and sorrow, and the fierce pull of Italian family bonds. As the protagonist settles in, a long-buried family secret surfaces, becoming the emotional core of the story’s final movement.

I can’t say enough good things about this novel. What begins as a slow, contemplative read becomes deeply captivating. By the end, I was completely absorbed.

[Wendy G · Rating 2 out of 5]

https://wendyreadit.wordpress.com/202...

This is the story of a family, those who left the Italian village after WW2 and a few who stayed in the mostly abandoned village. I think people who have traveled to small villages in Italy might get more absorbed in the story than I did.

[Jeanette · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful read by this author, grief and loss forming part of the background, present and past and for Hugh Fisher as he experiences the void in his life after the death of his wife the impact on him is profound, his soul mate, love of his life. His childhood was void of much love other than the times he spent with his aunts and grandmother in Italy. His mother changed dramatically when his father left and in mentally isolating herself left her son lacking any emotional and physical contact and for this the death of his wife along with dealing with the earlier death of his mother has left him in a dark place. His mother had also been abandoned by her father during WW2 through events that as a child were not explained to her with her own mother and older sisters unable to accept his permanent absence not knowing anything of his fate. 

Events come to light when Hugh receives an email from Iris, one of his aunts who describes the presence of a woman from Milan, "Una occupante Abusiva" for which he understands after a few moments as "a squatter" in the cottage promised to him by his mother. Elisa Tomassi an elegant woman who has been a professional restauranter has taken possession of the family cottage through a signed deathbed promise from Aldo Serafino, the husband/father who had disappeared from Hugh's family and as is revealed, he had needed to escape the enemy, his role as a partisan, a wanted man he had been badly wounded and nursed back to life by Elisa's family. 

With persuasion Hugh travels with Elisa to meet her mother and it's here that the threads of many past lives begin to unwind and hidden secrets revealed culminating in returned grief and loss, the final accusations revealed at Hughe's grandmother's one hundredth birthday celebrations, ones of past treacheries and abuse. 

[Candace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Professor Hugh Fisher studies abandoned towns in Italy, of which, we discover, there are many. His own ancestral village of Valetto is almost one of them, empty, except for the house where his three aunts and grandmother live. And Valetto has another notable feature--it was separated from the rest of the rugged landscape by an earthquake in the 1970s, so its only connection from the mainland, so to speak, is a narrow wooden bridge that cannot be crossed by vehicles the size of a donkey cart.

Hugh has inherited a stone cottage from his mother, but when he arrives to spend the summer there he discovers that someone has taken possession of the little house, saying that his vanished grandfather left it to her family in the 1940s.

This opens a whole can of worms as Hugh's family fights to keep the cottage, while discovering a connection between the two families that stretch back to World War II. Battling his own grief from the recent losses of his wife and mother, Hugh tries to find a balanced solution to the issue only to find that neither side has the least interest in it. He loves his aunts and grandmother but is also attracted to Elisa, the woman who's moved into the stone cottage.

What I love about Dominic Smith as a writer is that he sets his novels everywhere from 17th century Amsterdam to 1890s Papua New Guinea and now to a dangling village in Italy and is able to fully inhabit each era with assurance. "Return to Valetto" builds slowly and my pull to the story waxed and waned. Stick with it. The return to Valetto results in a painful, yet satisfying, end.

[Amy J · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to look on a map to double-check that Valetto wasn't a real place because of how richly rendered Dominic Smith has drawn it. A truly captivating story of a once small, but flourishing Italian hill town now nearly abandoned after a devastating earthquake, and the families tied to it and each other by decades of history. A vivid setting and deep characters with rich and complicated histories--don't miss this stunning novel.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance reader's copy.

[vicki honeyman · Rating 5 out of 5]

How wonderful that I was in northern Italy while reading this wonderful novel set in the central Italian region of Umbria. Picturesque descriptions of a (fictionalized) mostly abandoned little Italian village where the book takes place do not require being in Italy to enjoy the story! The character development is spot-on, the storyline is spot-on, and the setting is spot-on. Dominic Smith's writing is, for me, on par with authors such as Amor Towles, Sara Winman, and Anthony Doerr — he's excellent at storytelling and creating a sense of place and time.

[Cam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kinda bored with this book…. I had to push to get through it.

[Jan Toy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bit slow to start with but I plodded on and got right into it. Enjoyed reading it after all. Almost discarded it early on.