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Content snapshot
Flag an inaccuracy →What's in this book, at a glance — five things readers want to know before they start.
Violence
Some
The Spanish Civil War strand supplies the book's darkness — the fallout of war and its casualties — but Kirkus and other reviewers describe the wartime material as recounted rather than staged in graphic detail
Language
Barely any
Restrained period diction; reviewers make no note of coarse language
Sexual Content
A lot
Reviewers call this a sultry love story and an adulterous one; the affair is central and sensual, though descriptions emphasize atmosphere over explicitness
Substance Use
Barely any
Social drinking on the yacht and in Roman society, nothing more
Emotional Intensity
A lot
Adultery, exile, and unprocessed war trauma dominate; the phrase reviewers keep returning to is that the secrets of the past stay with us no matter how far we run
What this book is about
Hal, an itinerant journalist adrift in postwar Rome, spends one night with a mysterious woman named Stella. A year later a Contessa hires him to cover a film she is producing, and Stella turns up on the same voyage along the Italian Riviera with her husband. Foley braids their affair with the film's story and with what Stella survived in the Spanish Civil War.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
Adultery is central
Spanish Civil War trauma recounted
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