Another one of those novels that follows three or four very different characters, in this case from different decades, starting in 1962, on a small island hotel off the coast of Italy. They all connect in some way, as we discover from the reading and even seem fated to intersect. The story begins in Italy, 1962, when a fledgling actress, Dee Moray, flees from the set of the movie, CLEOPATRA, to a small hotel run by a young man, named Pasquale. The story then cuts to the present, to Hollywood, to the aging Michael Deane, producer, and his glorified secretary, Claire Silver. Shane Wheeler, divorced, drunk, seemingly a loser is about to pitch his movie script about the Donner Party, its grisly story of cannibalism. How these three, plus Dee's son, Pat make up the story, as alternating chapters take us forward and backward, and we begin to fit the puzzle together.
Dee flees to the small Ligurian coast hotel because she thinks she has cancer. Actually, she is pregnant, by Richard Burton, and the producer, Michael Deane makes up this story to get her off the set so the film can continue without her upsetting the 'greatest love story ever told.' Pasquale, the hotelier, takes interest in her, goes to Rome, in fact, to confront Burton and Deane with the fact that she is pregnant, not dying of cancer. Burton, though often drunk, comes off well, concerned and willing to help Dee. Deane, however, ever the arranger, gets Burton a part in The Longest Day, so he has to leave Dee and Michael, with Pasquale's acquiescent, packs Dee off to Switzerland. We do find that a relationship has developed between Pasquale and Dee, though unspoken. The other part of the puzzle is an American writer, Alvis Bender, who comes to the hotel for two weeks each year, but has writer's block. He ends up befriending Dee, helps her with her move to Switzerland and he eventually falls in love with her, seeking her out when he returns to the States and marrying her when he finds her on the West Coast, with a small son named Pat (Burtons' son). We also follow Pat's life, as a lead singer in a now defunct band, lost, but with a talent for the stage. It sounds silly and coincidental but you like most of the characters enough to not mind.
Everything moves towards the present, when Pasquale comes to Micheal Deane's studio. He is now a widower, in his seventies, and he wants to find Dee, the women he once loved back in the 1960s. Michael seems to want to help, so with Claire and Shane, the four of them set off to find Dee in Sand Point, Idaho, where she lives with her son Pat. They arrive and find that Dee runs a theater. They sit through a play, written by Pat's girl friend, which basically retells much of Dee and Pat's life, with Michael Deane as the villain. Eventually, all of them get together. Pasquale and Dee go off together, wondering if they can still find love. Michael makes money by producing the play about Dee and Pat's life. Claire becomes a successful producer; Shane writes movie scripts and all's well that ends well.
I liked the book the further along I got, despite the silliness at times of the plot. Not a great novel but one that's fun to read. My nephew Pat Holzheimer recommended it. The quotation at the end of the final chapter made me want to remember it: "There would be nothing more obvious, more tangible, than the present moment. And yet it eludes us completely. And the sadness of life lies in that fact."
How true...if only we could live more in the moment, less in the future and past. To the extent we can live 'mindfully,' we are happy.
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