Eternal set in Rome – Lisa Scottoline

Submitted: 13th July 2023

The blurb of this book got me from the moment I read it –

Elisabetta, Marco, and Sandro grew up as the best of friends, despite their differences their friendship blossoms into love, with both Sandro and Marco hoping to win Elisabetta’s heart.

But in the autumn of 1937, this begins to change as Mussolini asserts his power, aligning Italy’s Fascists with Hitler’s Nazis.

BookTrail Travel to Eternal

Boarding Pass Information: Rome

Author guide: Lisa Scottoline

Genre: historical

Food and drink to accompany: pasta and wine

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I admit that I had never read a Lisa Scottline book before reading this. Well, THAT is going to change! I got very immersed and involved with this from the start. I mean, Rome was a lovely setting but then war starts and my heart started to break.

I’ve never lived through a war thank god, but I feel as if I have stepped back in time and got a heartbreaking idea of what it might have been like. I don’t say this lightly as the book is so well-written and poignantly so, that it gets under your skin and pierces your heart.

I’ve read lots of war-time reads but not so much about life in Italy before and during the rise of Mussolini. I’ve read a lot about the war in Germany but not as is written here. Hitler invades Italy and that for me was a completely new and compelling angle to the whole genre. I cried at certain scenes in Rome’s Jewish ghetto,

The characters are all so real, so human and I just wanted to dive into the pages and give them all hugs. Elisabetta, Marco and Sandro were part of my family by the end of the novel. How these people changed, were affected, fought to survive. My heart went out to them all.

BookTrail Travel to Eternal

As always with me, I do love it when an author merges fact and fiction. I said before the Jewish scenes set in the Jewish ghetto of the city were the hardest ro read. Turns out this was the oldest living Jewish community in the West. The novel was apparently inspired by the author reading about the “rastrellamento” ( roundup) of the Jews in Rome on October 16, 1943, As a direct result of this, more than 1200 people: men, women and children were sent to Auschwitz.

If your heart is not broken and your cheeks not tear-stained by the end of this, then you’re made of stone. Despite the dark themes, this book reads like an ode to Italy – immerse yourself in the culture, food and language.

As for setting – well, the places and streets of Rome come alive before your eyes. Vivid, stunning and evoked with the pen of an author who has this place under her skin.

Eternal is a novel I would heartily recommend. Heartbreakingly wonderful.