valeriavescina Behind the scenes of 'That Summer in Puglia', Blog

WWN interview about “That Summer in Puglia”

Last Thursday I had the privilege of being interviewed by Helen Murray Taylor of the Women Writers Network about That Summer in Puglia. Helen writes both fiction and nonfiction. She’s the author of the immersive The Backstreets of Purgatory (Unbound, 2018) and the powerful Love Lay Down Beside Me and We Wept (Wilton Square, 2026). The Women Writers Network is an international community active on Bluesky (formerly on Twitter). Founded in 2017, it supports and promotes women’s writing. Its activities include a monthly author interview.

If you have a Bluesky account, you can access our conversation via the links below. If you’ve not discovered Bluesky yet, you’ll find a transcript of the interview further down this page. A few of the attendees also posed questions, which I’ve incorporated in the transcript.

Q1 https://bsky.app/profile/womenwritersnet.bsky.social/post/3msgjibnrku2m

Q2 https://bsky.app/profile/womenwritersnet.bsky.social/post/3msgjustq7l2b

Q3 https://bsky.app/profile/womenwritersnet.bsky.social/post/3msgkgpif7w2k

Q4 https://bsky.app/profile/womenwritersnet.bsky.social/post/3msgkyp623f2o

Q5 https://bsky.app/profile/womenwritersnet.bsky.social/post/3msglkh5ect2e

Q6 https://bsky.app/profile/womenwritersnet.bsky.social/post/3msgm4de4m22m

Transcript of the interview of 6 August 2026

Helen: Welcome, Valeria. To get things started, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your writing career to date?

Sure! I write novels, teach creative writing, and review books. I’m also proud to be a co-founder of the Women Writers Network! My first novel, “That Summer in Puglia”, debuted in 2018 at the Oxford Lit Fest. A second edition of it has just been released by Breakthrough Books, who will also publish my second book, a historical novel, this coming winter.

I graduated from the Goldsmiths Creative & Life Writing MA and since 2013 I’ve taught creative writing to people of all ages – from secondary-school pupils to university BA and MA classes. I run 2-3 writing retreats a year in Switzerland’s magical Bernese Oberland.

Breakthrough Books: Has teaching creative writing helped your own craft?

Undoubtedly! I learn something new every time.

Helen: I’ve seen pictures from your writing retreats. What an amazing setting. Can you provide the link?

Sure! Thank you for asking. Here is a link to my writing retreats in the Swiss Alps: https://valeriavescina.com/teaching/writing-retreats/

I’ve also reviewed fiction in translation for the European Literature Network’s The Riveter, opera and lieder for Seen And Heard International, and arts & culture events for the School of Advanced Study’s Talking Humanities. I occasionally review books on my blog.

Helen: Do all these other activities feed into your own writing practice?

For sure! Teaching means that I keep learning, but also that I must keep both my intuitive and my critical faculties working in tandem, in a balance. Writing reviews is similarly enlightening: I owe it to the author to always read as a writer!

Stephanie Bretherton: What made you want to go with Breakthrough Books?

In a risk-averse publishing landscape, Breakthrough Books champions exciting, original, high-quality books. So, it’s a joy to be published by it!

Helen: Without giving too much away, can you tell us a little about That Summer in Puglia? 

That Summer in Puglia is set in 1980s Puglia (chiefly in Ostuni) and present-day London. Tommaso has escaped discovery for thirty years – but a young private investigator, Will, has tracked him down in London. Tommaso asks him to pretend never to have found him. To persuade Will, Tommaso recounts the story of his life and his great love, Anna. In the process, he comes to recognise his true role in the events that unfolded long ago in Puglia, and the legacy of unresolved grief. Now Tommaso is being presented with a second chance – but is he ready to pay the price?

Rita E. Gould: Such a fascinating premise of what happened between the opening in present-day London and Puglia 30 years ago. What made you decide to use a frame tale?

It felt completely coherent with the story itself. It’s a long-overdue excavation by a man of his own past.

Rita E. Gould: I loved how it worked! He needed that outside impetus to stop retreating and to re-examine everything.

Helen: Yes, exactly that. Without it he would have hidden from his own story for the rest of his life.

Yes, exactly. I’m happy that you felt it worked. I wanted Tommaso to resist the push by the young PI to excavate his own past, and, at the same time, to slowly feel – as he narrates his life story – a sense of relief as he finally faces up to it.

Helen: The novel is infused with the sights, sounds, tastes and atmosphere of Puglia, which is delightful. Why did you decide to set the novel there?

I felt that my native Puglia offered an ideal setting: its layers of history are integral to Tommaso’s story. His memories of its sensuous colours, aromas and tastes, and of how it felt to love and be loved, and to grieve, eventually overwhelm him and help him open up to Will.

I love my native region and am glad to hear from readers that they feel transported to it. I’m proud that one of the endorsements said, “Here is the discovery through literature of Puglia”. 

Helen: That is so true. I felt like I was discovering a region that I didn’t know. Does it sound strange to say that to me its (Puglia’s) presence was almost like another character in the novel?

Not strange at all! On the contrary, I’m glad you felt that. Also to me, Puglia in this book truly is a character in its own right, in that it shapes and tests the protagonists. People who’re not very familiar with Southern Italy often don’t realise just how diverse it is, both between and within regions. Puglia is particularly rich in culture, for historical reasons.

Stephanie Bretherton: I loved the evocative richness of the story. It really made me want to visit the area, and it made me hungry all time! Do you think the Italian part of yourself made the ability to bring all the senses alive in the book a little more natural?

Thank you for that lovely comment (and question!). Yes, it’s my native region, so I know it very, very well. That helps to bring the sensorial details to life – and they’re very important in a story of a man recollecting his long-lost past.

Stephanie Bretherton: Yes, the senses compel us into feeling fully present while also immediately summoning the past!

It’s true of all of us, so yes, it was particularly important for Tommaso’s story.

Helen:  What are the main themes in That Summer in Puglia?

The novel has several interconnected themes. I did not set out to write to a theme (or two!), though, but discovered them while writing. That Summer is about all forms of love, and about compassion for others and oneself, as I think compassion is a thread running through them.

Helen: I think compassion is such an important theme, especially for our past selves. We can learn from Tommaso ‘s story. Better to face up to our mistakes because without that, we can’t be compassionate and forgiving to ourselves.

Exactly. Without compassion for ourselves and others, it’s so much harder to admit when we’re wrong and to learn from errors!

Rita E. Gould: I love that the compassion applies to everyone, including the PI! Tommaso listens to him and helps the investigator re-examine his pain.

Thank you for pointing that out. Indeed, I did mean it to hint at the fact that Tommaso was opening himself up to compassion, in the process!

That Summer is also about the necessity for dialogue, and the dangers of cutting oneself off from it. And it’s about the process that E.M. Forster called “connecting the fragments”: living with and bridging the contradictions in ourselves and others. 

Rita E. Gould: I think communication is so key in this novel, both in the past and in the present.

Helen: You bring this out beautifully in the book. I was so frustrated with Tommaso at certain points because so much could have been avoided by proper communication.

Yes, that was central to the story.

Rita E. Gould: I also think it was quite true to the age of the protagonists — young enough to be impulsive and to believe the worst recklessly.

Ah, yes. Their age is totally bound up with their responses.

Helen: The story is presented as a dramatic monologue by Tommaso to a private investigator. Why did you decide to frame it in this way? 

Tommaso narrates his story with the intensity that the resurfacing memories provoke in him. His narration is “framed” by moments with the young PI who has tracked him down. You don’t hear what the young man says but you infer it from Tommaso’s answers. That’s dramatic monologue. Browning used dramatic monologue for “My Last Duchess”, Camus for “The Fall”, Hamid for “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”.  It’s not a form you see often, but it struck me as so appropriate for Tommaso’s story! I’ll explain why!

So, why dramatic monologue for “That Summer”? First, it breaks the intensity of Tommaso’s narration. Second, it conveys his isolation. Third, it’s a dialogue of which we hear only one side, and Tommaso caused a tragedy by refusing dialogue.

Rita E. Gould: It makes so much sense! Tommaso is the only who has to speak since he broke down the lines of communication.

The final reason for choosing dramatic monologue for That Summer is that the reader is placed in the position of identifying with the PI and so wavers between sympathy and judgment for Tommaso. That’s appropriate, as he’s an unwittingly unreliable narrator.

Helen: It is the perfect device for mirroring what is happening in the story. Did you decide to do it straight off or did it come as part of a rewrite or edit?

I decided to do it straight off. One of my MA tutors suggested I try also a different form, and I did, for experimentation. But the contrast between the two only proved that the intuition about dramatic monologue being ideal for this story had been correct!

Helen: Tommaso narrates the story in a second language that has become his first. He talks of being “caught out” by idioms. Italian words peppered throughout the novel add to the atmosphere. Could you tell us about this?

For Tommaso’s language, I drew partly on experience. I learned English as a child and have lived in English-speaking environments most of my life, so I’m fully bilingual. Tommaso, on the other hand, starts learning English only aged 19. I’ve therefore given him a recognizably Italian accent and have him being “caught out” by idiomatic expressions, as he has learnt much of his English from books. I also peppered Tommaso’s narration with Italian words. This can only be done sparingly, to avoid breaking the flow for the reader. So, Italian words appear either in particularly emotional moments, or to describe something especially Apulian. 

Helen: You do this perfectly. Also, there is something singular and beautiful about your writing and I wonder whether you think it is influenced at all by being able to speak several languages?

Thanks for that lovely comment! I suppose being a linguist (I speak 4 languages) involves both a love of language and a heightened awareness of its structural and lexical possibilities. Maybe it’s bound to flow into a mixture of intuitive and conscious narrative choices.

Helen: What a wonderful gift for a writer to have the richness of four languages to work with. Very envious and impressed, Valeria.

The cover for That Summer in Puglia is beautiful. Can you tell us how it came about? 

The cover photo was taken by photographer Salvo d’Avila as part of a shoot to capture the novel’s spirit. It shows a young couple in the old town of Ostuni, the novel’s main setting. It’s in black & white, and you see their backs. It conveys a sense of memory and nostalgia.

Breakthrough Books’ Jamie Chipperfield then designed the cover, and I love it. He heightened that sense of memory and nostalgia with a fading effect along the photo’s edges. And the blue-green of the title’s font evokes both the sea and the couple’s youth. I also like how dynamic Jamie Chipperfield made the back cover, with the blurb in black and the endorsements in the same blue-green of the title on the front.

Breakthrough Books: Jamie did such a good job! He really captured the spirit of young love, nostalgia, and a sense of the ‘unknown’ – it also has a timeless feel.

I agree! Not just a beautiful cover, but it captures so many aspects of the story!

Conveying the sense of nostalgia was important: it’s the nostalgia that Tommaso’s narration is infused with but that he refuses to acknowledge because it would mean recognising reality and therefore his responsibility in the events of years earlier. His nostalgia manifests by his selective recall of the beauty of Puglia: sights, sounds, aromas, tastes… They are all true, but he disregards the rest of a more complex reality. His refusal to acknowledge his nostalgia shows also in the way he depicts other protagonists. Almost until the end, Tommaso fails to acknowledge the humanity of people he casts in the role of villains, as he subconsciously fears opening a crack in his self-narrative. The PI forces him to excavate his past and to face up to his own role in the events of 30 years earlier.

Helen: The cover beautifully evokes this sense of nostalgia.

My thanks to designer Jamie Chipperfield and editor-in-chief Stephanie Bretherton at the wonderful Breakthrough Books for that!

Breakthrough Books: It was a joy to work on!

Helen: Where can we find out more about you and your books?

You can find me on my website (https://valeriavescina.com/) and on social media: Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. My second novel, Habit of Disobedience, will be forthcoming from Breakthrough Books this winter, and it too will be available from all good bookshops. 

Breakthrough Books is an innovative independent press that emerged out of a collective of established authors. As I said earlier, in a risk-averse publishing landscape, it champions exciting, original, high-quality books. Being published by them is a joy. Here is a link to the Breakthrough Books website: https://www.breakthroughbookcollective.com/

And finally, a little information about the forthcoming Habit of Disobedience: https://valeriavescina.com/writing/habit-of-disobedience/

Helen: Very exciting! Can’t wait to read it. We will have to have you back for another author interview when this one comes out. I am already anticipating lots of possible questions and I haven’t even read it yet!!

Rita E. Gould: I love a disobedient nun! I can’t wait to read this book.

Thank you, Rita! I’ve grown to love the “disobedient” 16th-century nuns who inspired the novel.

Helen: We are really looking forward to the release of Valeria’s second novel, Habit of Disobedience.

Thank you, Valeria, for chatting with us, and thank you to all who took part in tonight’s Author Interview. To find out about future events, make sure to follow us on Bluesky and the hashtag #WomenWritersNet.

Thank YOU, Helen Murray Taylor and the whole WomenWritersNet team, for this opportunity to chat with you at length about That Summer in Puglia! And thank you, of course, to all attendees and readers of our conversation!

Rita E. Gould: I’m so glad I came to tonight’s WomenWritersNet Author Interview! I think I love that That Summer in Puglia even more after learning about all of the thought that Valeria Vescina put into this moving novel.

That Summer in Puglia is available from your local bookshop or through Waterstones, Blackwell’s, Barnes & Noble and Amazon worldwide, in paperback and ebook.

Image credits:

Photos by the author

Cover by Jamie Chipperfield, incorporating photos by Salvo D’Avila

valeriavescina Behind the scenes of 'That Summer in Puglia', Blog

A second edition of ‘That Summer in Puglia’

This weekend marks one month from Breakthrough Books’ release of That Summer in Puglia‘s second edition, in paperback and on Kindle. The first edition was launched in 2018 at the FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival and had three print runs. I hope the book will continue finding its way into readers’ hands far and wide.

I’m grateful to Stephanie Bretherton, Breakthrough Books‘ editor, who is a joy to work with, and to Jamie Chipperfield for his gorgeous cover design, which captures the nostalgia of the narrating protagonist, Tommaso. Breakthrough Books will also be publishing my second book Habit of Disobedience, later this year – it’s a historical novel inspired by events that took place in Puglia in the 1500s.

Breakthrough Books held a ‘countdown’ for the release, on several social media. Here, a few images.

Other posts, including two short extracts from the novel, have followed over the last thirty days.

On publication day, I was… in my native Brindisi! That’s where a key section of the novel is set, while most of the story takes place in Ostuni, just 35 km up the Adriatic coast. Behind me in this photo you see Brindisi harbour: it isn’t just beautiful; it has also ‘seen’ major historic events over the last couple of thousand years (that would take a whole other blog post!). In this photo I’m the happy holder of a proof of the book! 😉

If you happen to be in or near Lucerne in Switzerland (where I now live), come to the event organised for 12 June by Terranova Bücherparadies, a super-lovely bookshop that stocks titles in several languages. My interviewer will be Dr Monica Tiffany, lecturer in Literature and Philosophy.

And if you’d like to get hold of the novel, you’ll find it wherever you usually buy your books! Here, just a few places:

  • Amazon (worldwide, from its country-specific sites)
  • Waterstones (UK)
  • Blackwell’s (UK)
  • Barnes & Noble (US)
  • At the best independent bookshops in Puglia:
    • in Ostuni, where most of That Summer in Puglia unfolds, visit the wonderful Bottega del Libro, a treasure trove for book lovers
    • if you’re in nearby Monopoli, the Libreria Minopolis is the go-to place
    • in Brindisi, where key scenes in the story take place, step inside the welcoming Libreria Indipendenza, a stone’s throw from the train station
    • in Lecce, discover the historic Libreria Palmieri, which proudly remains in family ownership after nearly 60 years.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this short write-up about the newly released edition and that you’ll enjoy the novel even more, if you haven’t read it yet!

valeriavescina Blog, Reviews

Review of ‘Love lay down beside me and we wept’

Photo of Love Lay Down

love lay down beside me and we wept by Helen Murray Taylor

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Any one-liner for describing what this memoir is about would do it an injustice: it could not encompass its range. It’s about depression, attempted suicide, surviving it, recovering, building a new life… About societal expectations and how they shape us. About our system of mental healthcare. And it’s very much about love.

‘Love Lay Down’ is an important book. Helen Murray Taylor shares with generous openness and formidable eloquence her story of depression’s vortex and of her recovery. Her memoir is vivid, raw, at many points heartbreaking. At the same time, it’s infused with wit, with her ability to perceive the surreal and the outright comedic in some of the worst circumstances. She lets us into her intense emotions and thoughts at the time, as well as into her capacity for looking back at them now with hard-won distance.

Love blazes a luminous, life-saving path throughout this memoir: the love between Helen and her husband; that of family; of friends, colleagues… The whole book strikes me also as a real act of love by its author towards readers: as a gift of hope – and of feeling seen and heard – to sufferers from depression; and as a gift of understanding to all. ‘I hope that no one who reads this has ever found, or will ever find, themselves being dragged under by the force of their depression. But if that is you, […] please, please, call out for help. The help when it comes might not steer you to dry land but it might be the lifejacket that lets you turn on your back and float, the thing that lets you rest awhile, that keeps you afloat a little bit longer. Survival isn’t always about kicking against the waves. Tomorrow the tide might turn and wash you ashore.’

Re-posted from my Goodreads review

valeriavescina Blog, Reviews

Review of ‘Love Forms’ by Claire Adam

Longlisted for The Booker Prize

Love Forms by Claire Adam

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

‘It was my father who made the arrangements. My uncle helped, since he lived down south, where all this kind of business is carried out.’

The opening of ‘Love Forms’ sets the tone for the whole novel: a voice that immediately draws you in with its fresh, direct, familiar cadence; and ‘the arrangements’ at the heart of the story. These arrangements see the then sixteen-year-old protagonist, Dawn, whisked off from her home in Trinidad to Venezuela, where she must give birth in secret and surrender her baby for adoption. The reason? ‘She made a mistake and brought shame to her family.’

It’s not long before Dawn realises that the real mistake – whether really hers or her parents’ – was to give up her daughter. The intense longing to find her again impacts the rest of Dawn’s life. Though she goes on to graduate in medicine in the UK, work, marry, and raise two beloved sons, her yearning for the lost child becomes an ever-present, aching part of who she is. When she’s fifty-eight, we witness one of her many attempts to track down her daughter – a search that plays out as a roller coaster of emotions.

Dawn feels so real, that I was absorbed by her evolving feelings and her growing understanding of herself, of her family, and of the changing world around her. This is partly thanks to Claire Adam’s sensitive psychological portrayal of her main character, and partly because of the three-dimensionality she lends to the places – Trinidad, Tobago, Venezuela and London – and times the protagonists inhabit. The dialogue across generations – between Dawn and her parents, siblings, and children – is deeply affecting, as powerful in its silences as in its words. These exchanges and the characters’ actions sustain a taut narrative tension: I often found myself wondering about the consequences of certain conversations – and discovered their outcomes in the novel’s final chapters.

It’s all there in the title: ‘Love Forms’ is about different kinds of love (starting with that of a mother for her child), and about the ways it’s kindled, grows, is challenged, changes… and how it changes us in turn. It’s a poignant, beautifully written novel, and one of the finest I’ve read in a long time. I couldn’t recommend it more highly.


valeriavescina Blog, Reviews

Stephanie Bretherton’s “The Fire in Their Eyes”

Re-blogged from Goodreads

The Fire in Their Eyes by Stephanie Bretherton (Breakthrough Books, 2025)

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“The Fire In Their Eyes” is a breath of fresh air: a thriller that keeps you hooked right up to the end, it’s boldly original, unafraid to experiment with form, and courageous in its engagement with urgent issues. It reveals the interconnections between these issues, while weaving a narrative that is both emotionally gripping and intellectually engaging. If you crave fiction that does more than entertain – stories that challenge you to think and that spark meaningful conversation – this book is for you.
Structured across dual timelines, the novel follows three female protagonists, all of them gripped by a strong sense of impending danger. Each woman fights, with grit and intelligence, to prevent a catastrophe. Though separated by time and geography, the threats they face are connected.
In the Arctic, geneticist Eloise races against time at a scientific research station to neutralise a fresh danger to humanity. What is its link to the DNA of “Sarah,” a woman whose 74,000-year-old remains were discovered on Mt. Kenya?
Meanwhile in Manchester, psychiatric nurse Jessica – whose husband Max unearthed Sarah’s remains – is experiencing a heightened sense of threat. What is the cause of this change in her? And how will it affect her deep, tender bond with Max?
In a lush Kenyan valley 74,000 years ago, the shamanic Old Woman – Sarah’s daughter – perceives an impending danger that could annihilate her people. It falls to her to discern the precise nature of the threat and devise a way to combat it.
Stephanie Bretherton’s novel is underpinned by meticulous research. Complex scientific ideas – particularly in biology, genetics, and virology – are conveyed with clarity and precision and linked back to some of the most profound questions of our time. For example, the author draws links between globalisation, climate change and other environmental issues, rising population density, and the emergence of new pathogens. She also explores the spiritual and philosophical questions raised by natural disasters, political opportunism, and the consequences of human actions. One question resonates especially strongly: from one generation to the next, how do we pass on the best of what it means to be human? The power of all forms of love to help us meet the toughest challenges is one of the novel’s connecting threads.
This is not, however, a didactic book. Each of its three narrative strands is as gripping as a thriller, with high stakes and expertly controlled pacing. The tension builds steadily towards an emotionally resonant climax. I found Jess and Max’s story particularly moving – an honest, tender portrayal of love and the difficulties it must overcome.
The novel’s intricate structure is beautifully handled. You always know exactly where you are and feel secure in the hands of a confident storyteller. Each of the three protagonists is surrounded by sharply drawn secondary characters: family, friends, and colleagues who feel fully alive. The integration of emails, text messages, and unsent letters lends further realism and emotional depth. The settings are equally immersive: Eloise’s sterile research facility and the bleak beauty of the Arctic; Jess at the psychiatric hospital where she works, in the swimming pool where she finds release, and in the quiet refuge of memory – drifting back to a long-ago dive among minnows; and the Old Woman’s tribal village – rich with ritual and community – and its wild surroundings.
This is a novel of gripping storytelling, literary substance, and lasting insight – one I wholeheartedly recommend. “The Fire In Their Eyes” is the second book in “The Children of Sarah” series, and I already look forward to its sequel.

valeriavescina Behind 'Habit of Disobedience', Blog, Reviews

Historical fiction – my top reads of the last 12 months

Berthe Morisot, La Lecture (Reading), 1888 (Public domain image. Source: Wikiart)

I’ve always loved historical fiction, so putting together a full list of titles I’d recommend would make for a very long post. The first novels to captivate me were Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard at secondary school. Soon after, I discovered Dacia Maraini’s The Silent Duchess. To these, over the years, I added books by Umberto Eco, Carol Shields, A.S. Byatt, Hilary Mantel, Rose Tremain, Tracy Chevalier, and many others.

What must historical fiction do, for it to stand out for me? First, it must be beautifully written. I’m very open to experimentation with form – perhaps a result of my own background as a novelist and creative writing tutor. I prize books strong in characterisation, sense of place, story structure and plot development, and other elements of the craft. Second, I’m thrilled when a novel teaches me something surprising. It could be an event central to the whole book, or a small, striking detail. I’m especially drawn to forgotten or silenced perspectives. Third, I value insights and themes that shed light on the past and the present: do they challenge harmful narratives or illuminate legacies we’re still contending with? And fourth, the story must be painstakingly researched and imagined, to possess the authenticity on which everything else rests. That includes a serious attempt at immersing me in the worldviews of the time and place depicted.

If any of this resonates with you, here are seven books I read in the past twelve months that I hope you’ll enjoy. They’re listed in alphabetical order.

Astraea – Kate Kruimink (2024, Weatherglass Books)

This powerful little volume (115 pages) won the 2024 Weatherglass Novella Prize. Set on a ship in the nineteenth century, it’s about a cargo of female convicts destined for Australia. We experience events from the point of view of fifteen-year-old Maryanne. It’s a haunting yet hopeful tale of resilience and camaraderie in the face of misery and brutality. The narration is viscerally immersive, anchored in Maryanne’s raw physical and mental perceptions. Look out for Kate Kruimink, who has already published two other novels.

Costanza – Rachel Blackmore (2024, Renegade/Dialogue Books)

Costanza Piccolomini, the woman at the centre of this novel, was the muse, lover and model of Gianlorenzo Bernini, the leading sculptor of seventeenth-century papal Rome. In a horrific act of violence, Bernini ordered a servant to disfigure her, in the belief she had been unfaithful to him with his younger brother. Basing herself on the facts that have come down to us about Costanza and the other protagonists, Rachel Blackmore has painstakingly reimagined her life. The reconstruction of the all-important social and cultural context is outstanding, and her conjectures about what happened highly plausible, while her portrayal of Costanza’s inner world is empathetic and engaging. The novel tackles enduring themes: double standards, the abuse of power, and coercive control.

For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain – Victoria MacKenzie (2023, Bloomsbury)

This slim novel brings to life two well known English mystics, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. They are, respectively, the first woman to have written a book in English, and the first author of an autobiography in English. Victoria MacKenzie imagines their meeting in 1413. She draws on their writings and on her research into the medieval context to offer us vivid portrayals of both. Their personalities and circumstances differ greatly from each other: Julian, a reflective anchoress, and Margery, a chaotic mother of fourteen. And yet, their experiences and spirituality make for a strong connection between the two. MacKenzie balances their alternating voices with a poet’s precision and sensitivity. A luminous reading experience.

Once The Deed Is Done – Rachel Seiffert (2025, Virago)

This is the fifth novel by Rachel Seiffert, whose The Dark Room (historical fiction) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Once The Deed Is Done opens in March 1945, as the collapse of the Reich draws near. A multi-point-of-view narration gives us access to the thoughts, choices, and personal histories of several inhabitants of a Northern German village. Ruth, a British Red Cross officer, is tasked with supervising and caring for displaced people in a camp the advancing Allied Forces have just set up on the village’s outskirts. Gradually, a dark, shocking secret harboured by some of the villagers emerges. The novel highlights an issue rarely covered in WW2 fiction: the fate of forced labourers during and after the war. With her moving, unsentimental prose, Seiffert poses tough questions about individual and collective responsibility.

The Painter’s Daughters – Emily Howes (2024, Simon & Schuster) Peggy and Molly Gainsborough are the charming objects of portraits by their father Thomas, one of eighteenth-century England’s most acclaimed painters. Emily Howes turns the two sisters into the subjects of her deeply moving debut novel. Molly suffers episodes of mental confusion from a young age and Peggy instinctively shields her. When the family moves from rural Ipswich to fashionable Bath, hiding Molly’s condition becomes harder. Add to this mix a beguiling composer who enters the sisters’ lives, disrupting their close bond and putting Molly’s fragile sanity at risk. Howes steeps the characters’ thinking firmly in the mentality of the era, rendering their feelings, actions, and dilemmas convincing and deeply affecting. The novel delicately examines themes of devotion, mental illness, sisterly love and rivalry, and other family dynamics. It thoughtfully explores the complex area between protectiveness and control in challenging circumstances, without casting judgment.

Vor Aller Augen – Martina Clavadetscher (2022, Unionsverlag) I’m afraid this one isn’t available in English yet. Martina Clavadetscher is a well-known author of books and plays, and the winner of the 2021 Swiss Book Prize. In Vor Aller Augen (In Plain Sight), she foregrounds nineteen women portrayed in iconic paintings: from Cecilia Gallerani in Leonardo’s Lady with an Ermine to Victorine-Louise Meurent and Laure in Edouard Manet’s Olympia, from Joanna Hiffernan in James Whistler’s Symphony In White no. 1 to Dagny Juel in Edvard Munch’s Madonna. Clavadetscher not only captures the moments immortalised on canvas, but, above all, lets each protagonist recount her life story in her own distinctive voice. The silenced object of the painter’s (and the viewer’s) gaze thus becomes the active subject, a real-life woman demanding recognition.

And finally, a bonus recommendation: not a novel, but a piece of historical life writing. Fiction can vividly evoke what it was like to live in another era, but so can micro-history and exceptionally well-crafted family memoirs like the one featured below. Originally published in German, it appears in a superb English translation by Jamie Bulloch.

Alice’s Book – by Karina Urbach, trans. Jamie Bulloch (2022, MacLehose Press)

The title refers to So kocht man in Wien!, a bestselling cookbook authored in 1935 by historian Karina Urbach’s Jewish grandmother, Alice. Forced to flee Austria for England in 1938, Alice survived, while her sisters perished in concentration camps. After the war, she discovered that her book had been reissued in 1939 in an ‘Aryanised’ edition: the author ostensibly a German man; and the names of Jewish and foreign recipes germanised. Despite her repeated appeals, the publisher refused for decades to acknowledge Alice as the true author; it returned the rights to her heirs only after being publicly exposed in 2020. In Alice’s Book, the cookbook is symbolic of loss. It offers a powerful vehicle for tracing the devastating impact of Nazi persecution on one Jewish family – dispersed across China, England, and the U.S. – and for honouring Alice’s spirit of resilience, generosity, and hope. It also sheds light on the disturbing reality of companies and individuals that continued to profit from crimes committed against Jews long after the war had ended.

About me: I’m Italian and British, and moved from England to Switzerland a few years ago. I hold an MA in Creative & Life Writing from Goldsmiths College (University of London). My debut novel, That Summer in Puglia, was published in 2018. I’ve just completed the manuscript of my second novel, Habit of Disobedience, set in Southern Italy in the late 1500s. Inspired by true events, this tale of nuns who stood up to the Church explores themes of power, control and female resistance that resonate today.

valeriavescina Behind 'Habit of Disobedience', Blog

Accuracy and authenticity in historical fiction

Sofonisba Anguissola’s The Chess Game (1555) is packed with meaning. Among other things, it’s a statement about women’s agency and about Sofonisba and her sisters’ exceptional education. The strategy game of chess was normally the preserve of men. Dama (le jeu de dames) was considered more appropriate for women.

Speak of accuracy and authenticity in historical fiction, and you’ll find writers agreeing on some things but not on others. “Shoulds” abound. Accuracy, you’ll often hear, is objective: it involves verifiable facts, from dates and places to furniture and dress. Authenticity, by contrast, is somewhat subjective: the reader must perceive the story’s world as faithful to the era in question.

Like many dichotomies, this clear-cut view of accuracy as objective and of authenticity as subjective is an over-simplification. The accurate details that authors of historical fiction work so hard to respect are unavoidably a selection, made from their own perspective and as a function of the story; conversely, readers may query the authenticity of well-documented elements that clash with widely held stereotypes and tropes. This matters because authors’ answers to these challenges lead to differing choices. It’s particularly important with respect to fictional re-imaginings of the female experience: recent decades of scholarly findings into ordinary women’s lives – whose legacy most impacts the present – now provide us with invaluable insights.

I’ve spent years researching and writing Habit of Disobedience, a novel inspired by real-life 16th-century women in Southern Italy. Scouring manuscripts, books, and articles in historical archives and libraries; attending history conferences; visiting museums of all kinds; corresponding with historians, in my search for missing details… You’ll gather my efforts at faithfulness – accuracy and authenticity – were not half-hearted. Still, since the key protagonists of my story are ordinary women, there are too many gaps to fully piece together the micro-history. I’m a novelist and tutor in creative writing, not a historian: my interest lay in attempting to inhabit the past until I could ‘see’ and ‘hear’ the characters in places that today convey only a faint echo of their struggles, joys, fears, and dilemmas. Where history left voids, I found doors I could open to fictional elements: characters and threads that capture people and the heartrending situations they experienced.

It’s the approach that felt right for this novel. The true events that inspired Habit of Disobedience are dramatic, and the fictional yarns I wove through them had to be highly consistent with their contemporary context. I’ve aimed to offer what Stephen Greenblatt expressed superbly in a 2009 article: for my protagonists to ‘carry the burden of a vast, unfolding historical process that is most fully realized in small, contingent, local gestures.’1

A realistic ‘women’s world’ in Gaudenzio Ferrari’s Birth of the Virgin (1541-43). The water from a baby’s first bath was thrown into the hearth for a girl and outside the front door for a boy.

There’s an additional reason why I’ve strived for faithfulness: I wanted to give a voice to these unheard women because of their relevance to the present day. The novel highlights their acquiescence in a system they thought they could not change, the areas of agency they carved out for themselves, and the trigger for their resistance. It holds a mirror to our times, without anachronisms. That’s also why I’ve aimed to immerse readers in the mentality of the time (to the extent available to me, five centuries later) – our value system affects how we frame and express our emotions in different eras and cultures.2 The more deeply readers let themselves be drawn into my protagonists’ worldview, the greater their surprise at how much of it persists today in changed forms.

Participants at a recent Women Writers Network discussion felt that most people today still live in a patriarchal society. The impact on women is obvious, but it is, ultimately, negative for everyone. It’s a framework of attitudes, beliefs, behaviours, and rules that most of us, no matter our gender, have absorbed and unwittingly sustain until we recognise them. Historical fiction can shine a powerful light on them.

As authors, we strive for accuracy and authenticity – seeking to shift perceptions, however slightly, away from stereotypes and tropes. In doing so, we can contribute much-needed nuance to the public discourse, making it more inclusive and less polarised.

In the words of Hilary Mantel: ‘What can historical fiction bring to the table? It doesn’t need to flatter. It can challenge and discomfort. If it’s done honestly, it doesn’t say, “believe this” – it says “consider this.” It can sit alongside the work of historians – not offering an alternative truth, or even a supplementary truth – but offering insight.’3

I look forward to telling you more about Habit of Disobedience as soon as it finds its publisher.

[1] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2009/11/05/how-it-must-have-been/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR-081124-news&utm_content=NYR-081124-news+CID_075386c07c1251a015e3b5bd8741dede&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_term=Stephen%20GreenblattHow%20It%20Must%20Have%20Been

[2] The academic field of history of the emotions was eye-opening in this respect, as was Arlie Russell Hochschild’s concept of ‘emotional labour’.

[3] The BBC Reith Lectures. Hilary Mantel’s Reith Lecture 2 – The Iron Maiden. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08vkm52/episodes/player

Image credits:

Sofonisba Anguissola’s The Chess Game (1555). Photo by Mortendrak, reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 international license.

Gaudenzio Ferrari’s Birth of The Virgin (1541-43). Photo by the author, taken at the Pinacoteca di Brera.  

valeriavescina Blog

A writing retreat in the Swiss Alps

Here’s a post to give you a flavour of the writing retreats in the Bernese Oberland. I’ve run several retreats in this spectacular corner of the world, and it’s where I’ll be hosting future ones.

The days involve a mix of lectures, workshop exercises, feedback, and individual writing time. A maximum of three participants means your work receives a truly exceptional degree of attention – from me and from your fellow attendees. And then, of course, there’s a warm social side to it: meals and easy walks offer more opportunities for getting to know others who share your passion for writing, and for making friends. Participants often stay in touch with one another after the retreat, exchanging feedback on their writing projects on a regular basis. I’ll leave the word to them, through their testimonials!

First, a few words from attendees working on fiction projects:

Here, some testimonials from attendees working on life-writing projects:

Afterwards, I love hearing how everyone is progressing! One of the retreats this year will be for returning attendees, enabling them not only to find time and space for their projects, but also to grow their supportive writing community by meeting people from other cohorts. What a joy it will be to see them all again!

If you’d like to learn more about these writing retreats in the Swiss Alps, and to book, click here.

valeriavescina Behind 'Habit of Disobedience', Blog, Reviews

‘Medieval Women: In Their Own Words’ – a British Library exhibition

Whether you live in London or plan to visit, do not miss the ‘Medieval Women’ exhibition at the British Library. It has generated a phenomenal response, in terms of both praise and visitor numbers, and for good reason. The priceless documents on display offer a rare opportunity to view in one place the evidence of two long-term trends: the deep historical roots of women’s social and legal status; and women’s efforts to exercise agency despite them.

Some of the documents relate to famous figures: a letter signed by Joan of Arc, requesting munitions; the manuscripts of Julian of Norwich’s ‘Revelations of Divine Love’ and of Margery Kempe’s eponymous book; Christine de Pizan’s illuminated ‘Book of the City of Ladies’… The list is spectacular, but the context and detail provided by the items is what makes the whole an unmissable event – it’s not often that you get to ‘hear’ the words of ordinary women. The exhibits include books of treatments for women by women, texts on herbal cures and obstetrics manuals used by female practitioners, a petition by a female slave who refuses to be sold, embroidery and illuminated manuscripts signed by nuns, a woman’s treatise arguing that husbands and wives should enjoy equal rights, the first book printed by a woman… but also, a daughter disowned for marrying a family servant, nuns destined to the cloister since childhood, a queen who fends off male relatives’ attempts to dethrone her, the view of the female body as defective and disease-prone, the prayers to St Margaret for protection during childbirth, records showing women being paid less than men for the same work…

Through their selection of the items (around one hundred and forty), the curators have conjured a mosaic of medieval lives that is not only fascinating, but also offers insights into our own times, when women’s hard-won rights are coming under threat. As the curators explain: ‘Break free from traditional narratives and […] discover stories familiar to women today, from the gender pay gap and harmful stereotypes, to access to healthcare and education, as well as challenges faced by female leaders. Hear the words of medieval women from across the centuries, speaking powerfully for the thousands whose voices have not survived.’1

This sentiment of giving a voice to the unheard spurred my long quest to inhabit the forgotten lives of a group of Southern Italian women from a different era: sixteenth-century nuns. My second novel, which I’ve just completed, is inspired by their remarkable true story. For me, the catalyst was a set of archival documents penned in iron-gall ink: they spoke to enduring issues of power, control, and female resistance. I hope the book will quickly find a publisher, so that my characters may move readers as deeply as the terror, dilemmas, and resilience of the women I encountered in those archival documents moved me. Certain objects in the exhibition – manuscripts copied by scholarly nuns, a cellaress’s notes that probably stay quiet about the politics she often had to navigate, embroidery, a written protest against restrictions on what women could wear, a letter showing the risks of ‘marrying beneath oneself’ – touched me particularly, as they evoked some of my characters and their situations.

Below, some manuscripts originating in Southern Italy and displayed in the exhibition: Tractatus de herbis (‘Treatise on Herbs’, Southern Italy, c. 1300); De Curis Mulierum (‘Treatments for Women’, in a 13th-century manuscript from England) by Trota, a 12th-century female physician at the medical school of Salerno; and De Ornatu Mulierum (‘On Women’s Cosmetics’, England or France, 13th century, from the original Southern Italian 12th-century compilation), another text forming part of the Trotula.

The ‘Medieval Women’ exhibition runs until 2 March 2025. Learn more here. To book tickets, click here.

Valeria Vescina is a novelist, reviewer, creative-writing tutor, and literary director of an arts festival. She is a graduate of the Goldsmiths MA in Creative & Life Writing. Born in Southern Italy, she studied and lived in the UK most of her life, before settling in Switzerland.

CREDITS

1 Source: https://medievalwomen.seetickets.com/timeslots/filter/medieval-women-in-their-own-words

Images: author’s own photos of the exhibition.