One of the most delightful aspects of author Rebecca Serle’s novel, One Italian Summer, is that it is set in a real hotel: the Hotel Poseidon in Positano, Italy. If you are so motivated, you can go there. If you are already there, you can read the book when you are not appreciating the view or sitting by the pool.
What to See and Where to Stay in Positano
It is not often that a work of fiction includes viable hotel and restaurant recommendations, but that is an unanticipated perq in Rebecca Serle’s One Italian Summer, an inviting work set in Positano, Italy with a few side trips to Capri and Naples. The novel is a delightful book to bring along or to read in anticipation of a vacation on the Amalfi Coast.
Told through the eyes of Katy Silver as she retraces the path her mother took during one glorious stay in Positano decades prior, the story melds memory and mourning and meaning into an Italian vacation.
This was supposed to be a mother-daughter trip, but Katy’s mother died from cancer not long before, and Katy opts to make the journey alone, even though she has a perfectly good husband who might have made a good substitute travel companion.
On Going Solo to Positano
This work is particularly well-suited for bashful adventurers who might be journeying alone. Although Katy is 30 herself and grew up in Los Angeles and lived for a while in New York City, she seems a bit tentative and even unworldly despite a seemingly privileged youth. Although she has been to London, she has never visited Europe—even as her now dead mother seems to have been fairly well-travelled.
At home in Los Angeles, her mother seemed to be the one making the decisions. Even in Italy, Katy lets others take charge of her life too easily, which, hopefully, means she will have an opportunity to grow, to shed that ambivalence. What better place to do so than in a coastal town overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.
Did you like Eloise at the Plaza? Then give One Italian Summer a try. It’s like Eloise, but for grown-ups. And there’s wine. And Positano. And Capri.
Bashful Adventurer
Still mourning the loss of the mother and carrying a fair amount of ambivalence about her husband, her L.A. home, everything, Katy indulges in an Italian vacation with gusto—drinking that wine, savoring pasta, sweating up the steps on the way to the Path of the Gods (Sentiero Degli Dei). She also dresses for dinner, makes new friends, goes on adventures with them, and, in sum, comes into her own after losing what one might characterize as the over-protection provided by her mother.
That mother was a decisive sort, the type who runs everything, the kind who picks out her adult daughter’s clothes. Katy must consult with her mother about life decisions small and large—even whether to have children now. Interestingly, though, it was Katy’s mother who suggested Katy play the field a bit more before marrying.
The Takeaway from Positano
Now that her mother is not quite of this world any longer, Katy finds herself wondering what her mother, Carol, was like on that stay in Positano, when Carolwas younger and more carefree and also more uncertain what her future held.
For mothers, it is something of a marvel how uninterested children are in our prior lives. They probably do not want to know. Some of us were not as good as we should have been.
Being closer in age to the (dead) mother than the traveling daughter and having had my own Italian summer fresh out of law school, I marvel at Katy’s openness to new experiences and at Katy’s surprise upon discovering a bit of her mother’s freewheeling past. We weren’t always responsible, moralizing know-it-alls trying to be good role models for our kids.
At one time for some of us, too, it was all ruins and wine and pasta and heat and freedom and no plans. Once upon a time, we also enjoyed chance encounters, random adventures, and the gathering of experiences and stories we ultimately opted not to disclose to our children.
—Lori Tripoli
Lori Tripoli is the editor and publisher of BashfulAdventurer.com.
Photo credit: M. Ciavardini.
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