Exclusive interview with author Santa Montefiore and a review of her new novel of mystery and love set in Tuscany and England
Rating: 4 Stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
HOLLYWOOD, CA (Gosh!TV) 7/21/2011 – “I love writing mysteries where there’s a twist,” says Mermaid Garden author Santa Montefiore. “It gives me something to get my teeth into and is always a challenge to pull off. I wanted to write two story lines that link together, one in Italy in Tuscany and the other on the English coast of Devon. They’re beautiful places and very different. I love the sea. It’s very evocative. It draws us out of ourselves and inspires us to think about the big questions of why we’re here and what happens after.”
In Mermaid Garden, ten-year-old Floriana loves the Tuscan villa that overlooks the sea just outside her small village. Sitting on the crumbling wall she looks over the garden imagining she’ll one day live there. Dante, the son of villa owner Beppe Bonfanti, invites Floriana in to look at the mermaid garden. As Floriana and Dante grow up they fall in love, but his powerful and ruthless father has the poor girl from the local village disappear. Dante is devastated. Decades later on the coast in Devon, a beautiful old country house has been turned into a hotel. Marina Turner hires Argentinean artist Rafa Santoro for the summer to teach the guests how to paint. How do Floriana, Dante, Marina and Rafa all connect? You’ll have to read the book…
“I love Argentina, so the hero is Argentine,” says Montefiore. “No, not a polo player. I thought of the basic plot and then let my mind wander. I don’t plan very much. I enjoy putting on my music and disappearing into my imaginary world, making it up as I go along, that way I’m as much surprised as the reader.”
Montefiore says she didn’t need to research Italy because she knows it well. “I lived in Milan for a while in my twenties and have holidayed in Tuscany. I love Italians. They’re very cultured…and of course they’re very passionate.”
For her research in England, Montefiore went to stay a couple of days at Endsleigh, a stunning hotel in Devon owned by her friend Olga Polizzi. “The hotel has a fascinating history and you really feel that when you’re there. I found it totally inspiring and came home, fingers twitching to get onto my laptop and start the book.”
Montefiore tells an engaging family saga that appeals in the way the novels of Maeve Binchy, Barbara Taylor Bradford and Penny Vincenzi. Mulit-generational stories intertwine and the plot unfolds like a flower in the sun. Mermaid Garden spans four decades, sweeping from the Italian countryside to the English coast.
Montefiore just finished the first draft of her 12th novel, which will come out next July. “It’s a mystery, a love story based in Hampshire England in a grand country house…with a few chapters in Klosters, Switzerland.”
Santa Montefiore lives in Kensington, London. She was born in Winchester, the daughter of Charles Palmer-Tomkinson, a British Olympic skier and confidante of Prince Charles for over three decades. Her sister is the socialite and writer Tara Palmer-Tompkinson, and her husband the historian Simon Sebag Montefiore. She has a farmhouse on her parents’ estate she visits on weekends. “It’s heaven because it’s where I grew up, surrounded by fields of crops and ancient bluebell woods,” says Montefiore. “My father is a farmer. The gardens are lovely and feature heavily in most of my novels as does my parents’ house that dates back to Henry VIII’s time.”
Montefiore’s USA website is santamontefioreauthor.com. In the UK it’s santamontefiore.co.uk. She’s also on Facebook and Twitter.
Mermaid Garden, Author Santa Montefiore. Hardcover, 432 pages, Publisher: Touchstone; Original edition (May 3, 2011). Language: English, ISBN: 9781451624304 $24.99
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