Love in Idleness

Rating:
Summary: Not what I expected from the author of A Vicious Circle, but
Review: Having been blown away by reading A Vicious Circle (why isn't this published in the US, by the way??)I was expecting a more satirical edge to Love in Idleness. As others have pointed out, it's based on A Midsummer Night's Dream, with the sexes reversed, and it would have been good to have had a cast that wasn't all successful professional people. Despite this, the book is an enchanting depiction of how that two-week summer break we all long for can go wrong, then right. The satire is mostly confined to Betty, the mother/mother-in-law who, face permenently frozen by Botox and disapproval, is the real villain of the story. The dialogue is superb, and I laughed aloud at the jokes about lawyers (Theo's firm is called Cain, Innocent). Polly's plans to pair off her oldest friends (including the lecherous Ivo Sponge, from A Vicious Circle)in the setting of an idyllic Italian villa go awry, and everyone swaps partners thanks to three children and a love potion containing Viagra that may or may not work. It's like a benign version of La Ronde - witty, sophisticated, and sympathetic even to the less attractive.
I thought this written with even more assurance than A Vicious Circle, and a lightness of touch that somehow goes deeper. For a comedy, it has many melancholy touches that prevent it being just froth, and it describes is the way the world is transformed by love, and the imagination. It's easy to read, but demands an answering intelligence in the reader. The ending, incidentally,is one of the best I've read in a modern novel for a very long time.

Rating:
Summary: wonderful holiday read, charming and intelligent
Review: I picked up this book in Cortona itself, and was enchanted from the very first page - although I have to say that sadly the town is less attractive and more touristy than that depicted in Craig's novel or Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun. The arrival of the Nobles, their family and friends (and particularly Betty, the mother-in-law who immediately commandeers the best bed in the house)were instantly and hilariously true to life. Yet there is also a deeper strain to the story, about the imagination and its powers to transform the way we see others, both erotically and as individuals. A novel about love and sex, it is also about children and literature. I was interested to see, after looking her up on the Internet, that Craig is a notable reviewer of children's books for the London Times. Perhaps this accounts for her remarkable portrayal of the way children, as well as their parents, see the world.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: While I enjoyed the allusions to A Midsummer Night's Dream, one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, I found this book far from satisfying. Craig evokes the Italian landscape beautifully, but I couldn't get past my disgust with some of the characters. Betty is horrid, but she's supposed to be; the problem is with characters we're meant to view sypathetically. Polly is a spritless doormat, only slightly evolved by the end of the book, and her two children are among the most hateful, odious brats I've ever seen in fiction. Craig apparently writes children's books as well as reviewing them; I hope she doesn't think all children are as rude and insensitive as those she portrays here. Quite polluted an otherwise pleasant read.