Rebecca Serle's Mother of Pearl Pearls of Wisdom

I picked up Rebecca Serle's One Italian Summer during a Target run last September, but it remained on my bookshelf for months.  Although it was much-buzzed-about, I just wasn't ready for a mother-daughter tearjerker.  But after I read Lee Hollis's (highly entertaining and enjoyable) Death of a Lobster Lover, I was ripe for something serious.

And losing your mother is as serious as it gets.

That's what happens to thirty-year-old Katy Silver in this novel.  Her mother was her best friend, so when she dies, Katy's world crashes.  Now she's questioning everything, including her marriage.  Heartbroken and lost, she embarks on the Italian vacation that she and her mother planned to take together.  Positano turns out to be postcard-perfect.  Katy is spellbound, getting to know her mother in a new way by exploring the city she loved.  Then the unthinkable happens when Katy sees her mother at her hotel, in the flesh and thirty years younger.  What follows is an unorthodox and haunting jaunt down memory lane.  I didn't love or even agree with all of it.  Yet although some parts were problematic, what I initially thought of as a clumsy conceit ultimately gave me chills.  

Thought-provoking and moving, One Italian Summer was sometimes difficult for this daughter and, now mother, to read.  

Still, it was well worth the detour.