Cinderella-ish tale with not-so-charming princes who inhabit the edgy setting of 1920s and 1930s Berlin during the rise of the Nazis, Farewell My Life spins an operatic tale of dangerous love, obsession and loss; of crumbling, dissolving and nothingness, that revolves around Grace, a shy 17-year-old whose fabulous talent for the violin promises a shimmering career.
Angelina led a life which required her to fib. When Angelina, the black sheep of the Pagano family, meets the mysterious Mr. Russell, she has no idea that she has seen him before…in another country.
And so begins Farewell My Life, a novel in three parts, which spins an operatic tale of dangerous love and loss.
The Lost Mother, the first part of this novel, slices back and forth between time and space, opening in the charming village of Georgetown, Washington D.C. while reflecting a family’s troubled past in the lovely village of Marostica in the Italian Veneto.
An Unsuitable Suitor, the second part of the novel, is a Cinderella-ish tale with not-so-charming princes who inhabit the edgy setting of 1920s Berlin.
Farewell My Life, the last part of the novel, set again in Berlin, Germany, during the dark 1930s as the Nazis gain power, takes comfortable lives, assumptions and civilizations and crumbles them into ash.
And all of this revolves around Grace, Angelina’s younger daughter, whose fabulous talent for the violin promises a shimmering career.
Excerpt
Weisse Maus had to be the oddest place he’d ever been in. Russell lowered the black mask over his eyes, and sat down next to Phelps. The room they were in looked strangely bourgeois with patterned wall paper, framed oils, and round tables covered with white tablecloths. Nearly everyone wore half-masks to conceal their identity, giving the atmosphere a creepy quality of illicitness. He looked at his watch. It was a quarter to midnight and the place was packed. He’d agreed to go see this bizarre slice of life because he needed the distraction and because Phelps needed his support. Poor fellow. His companion looked as miserable as he felt.
“Who comes here?”
“Berlin intellectuals. Traveling salesmen on expense accounts. Underworld kings with prostitutes in tow. Lesbian groupies. Elderly gentlemen from the provinces—”
Russell raised an eyebrow. “That’s quite a list.” He lit a cigarette.
Phelps smiled faintly. “It reflects the strangeness that is Berlin.”
Professional Reviews
A masterpiece readers can easily lose themselves in...
Angelina Miller, single mother of Violet and Grace, is most easily described as a loose woman. In the 1920s, it’s perhaps the kindest description one can have for her. She has affairs with multiple men, but when she comes across handsome Nicholas Russell, his attention quickly turns from her to her younger daughter, Grace. It seems like something out of a fairy tale; Nicholas is immediately captivated by the young woman, and the first thing they do together is to play a duet together: a Brahms sonata, with Grace on the violin and Russell on the piano. They perform beautifully with one another, and if this were a fairy tale, a whirlwind romance would begin then and there.
But if this were a fairy tale, the romance would not have begun with Russell flirting with Angelina, and no one would see any red flags. As it is, Angelina sees many. If it weren’t enough that Russell’s attentions to her daughter seem less romantic than obsessive, he speaks Italian with the intonations of a native, despite insisting he’s completely American. Russell’s pursuit of Grace and her own reactions are indeed a whirlwind, but whether they are truly a romance is left to the reader to decide.
Farewell My Life is a period drama in the form of a book, but the early 1920s form so much more than just a set piece to watch the lives of characters unfold. Every person in the book is masterfully shaped by the era, showing both prejudices, which would be overcome by living in the modern-day and inner strength and drive to claim what one wants that has existed throughout time. By not shying away from either, the author has made a masterpiece, one readers can easily lose themselves in. As the book sweeps on, Grace is brought from Georgetown to post-war Berlin, where she pursues her own passions to become a violinist, before being thrown into the middle of family strife she had no notion existed even the day before she became the center of it. It is an intimate epic, an image of the minutiae of lives spelled out against the vastness of family history.||I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I think any fan of historical fiction will too. The stakes feel just as high as in any war novel, because they are high for the characters. This makes them high for the reader as well, and any reader will no doubt be riveted from beginning to end.
Reviewed by Jo Niederhoff, San Francisco Book Review, August 2019
A unique, deftly scripted, and extraordinary novel
A unique, deftly scripted, and extraordinary novel by an author with a distinctive narrative storytelling style that will hold the readers dedicated attention from beginning to end, "Farewell My Life: Buona Notte Vita Mia" is an impressive and unreservedly recommended addition to both community and academic library Contemporary Literary Fiction collections. One of those rare novels that will linger in the mind and memory long after the book itself has been finished and set back upon the shelf, it should be noted for personal reading lists that "Farewell My Life: Buona Notte Vita Mia" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.99).
Reviewed by Midwest Book Review, July 2019
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