Two Women in Rome by Elizabeth Buchan

Submitted: 8th September 2023

Two Women in Rome by Elizabeth Buchan

A mysterious painting, two women communicating across time, religious artefacts, political discoveries and a story that transports us all to Rome. What a wonderful package holiday in book form? Let’s head off straight away!

Setting: the city of Rome and the world of art.

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Travel to Rome with two women

I seem to be on a role with books about botany and political turmoil. Stories with strong female leads too. This book falls into both of these boxes and draws a fascinating picture of an Italy at war, but one also of beauty, art and female resilience.

Lottie and Nina were the two central characters and we see the story unfold through their eyes. Lottie is the narrator of the present day who moves to Rome with be with her husband. She gets work as a archivist and this entails sorting through history to put it simply. There’s lots of letters and objects that people have donated or left behind and so they all have the fingerprints of a past life on them waiting to be discovered. The moment she found a painting, I was just as excited as she was. This is exactly the kind of thing I love. Objects in the present having traces of the past on them, stories attached to them just waiting to be discovered.

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Nina is the botanist from the past whose story reveals itself slowly but surely/This is not a fast read but then it’s not about that. Lottie needs time to find out about Nina and the painting, so be sure to read slowly to give her more time. This is how invested I was in the story of these two women and this painting that connected them.

The richness of this novel is comes from many things. Art, religion, war-time Italy -what a mix of themes! In terms of setting for Booktrailers, the author evokes the setting with artistic flair. We spend a lot of time in Rome both past and present and this gives way to creating a picture of the city across time. Overall, it’s like a canvas of political turmoil, beauty, art, heritage and religious turmoil.

There were some lovely moments in the novel. For example, Lottie and Nina’s connection across the ages. When Nina was writing in her diary, I felt that the two women were sitting side by side, in awe of the same story unfolding between them.

The author opens up a fascinating world and does it in a clever way via a painting. It’s like a time travel portal in a book and I would recommend this book wholeheartedly.