Lost Hearts in Italy: A Novel - Tapa blanda

‘A painstaking inquiry into an adulterous love affair and its aftermath.’ Guardian

‘The book’s curious polyphony lifts “Lost Hearts in Italy” above most comparable ventures into the Jamesian territory of Americans abroad.’ Observer

‘Lee writes movingly of that innocence, which once lost can never be recovered, of the price of betrayal and desire requited. Andrea Lee’s writing is beautifully measured with an eye for detail that is worthy of a Vogue stylist and her characters resonate with intelligence and worldly sophistication in this haunting novel.’ Irish Independent

‘Andrea Lee is the real thing. There is nothing more to say.’ Philip Roth

An insightful and passionate novel from the author of ‘Interesting Women’, which follows the dramatic breakdown of the lives and marriage of a couple once thought to be in love.

Mira Ward, a writer, and her husband Nick, a banker, are a newly married American couple who seem to have the ideal life. Good-looking and in love, they are the envy of their family and friends. But when Nick is transferred to Rome, the two become classic innocents abroad.

Fate intervenes when, on a plane journey to join her husband, Mira – by pure chance – is given a first-class ticket. Impulsively giving her phone number to Zenin, a predatory Italian tycoon she meets on the plane, she sets in motion a chain of events that will reveal the cracks in her marriage and her self-image, and shatter her life as she knows it.

Evoking the grandeur and romance of Italy, and weaving back and forth in time – between the current lives of Mira, Nick and Zenin, and the tumultuous days of the affair – ‘Lost Hearts In Italy’ is a haunting novel of betrayal and passion, about the sacrifices we make in the name of love, and the true cost of desire.