The Italian Party, Christina Lynch
The Italian Party, Christina Lynch
List: $26.99 | Sale: $18.89
Club: $13.49

The Italian Party
A Novel

Author: Christina Lynch

Narrator: Edoardo Ballerini

Unabridged: 10 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/20/2018


Synopsis

The Italian Party by Christina Lynch is a delicious and sharply funny audiobook about “innocent” Americans abroad in 1950s Siena.

Newly married, Scottie and Michael are seduced by Tuscany's famous beauty. But the secrets they are keeping from each other force them beneath the splendid surface to a more complex view of ltaly, America and each other.

When Scottie’s Italian teacher—a teenager with secrets of his own—disappears, her search for him leads her to discover other, darker truths about herself, her husband and her country. Michael’s dedication to saving the world from communism crumbles as he begins to see that he is a pawn in a much different game. Driven apart by lies, Michael and Scottie must find their way through a maze of history, memory, hate and love to a new kind of complicated truth.

Half glamorous fun, half an examination of America's role in the world, and filled with sun-dappled pasta lunches, prosecco, charming spies and horse racing, The Italian Party is a smart pleasure to listen to.

Praise for The Italian Party:

"Tremendous fun! Wives with big secrets, husbands with bigger ones, swirling around a 1950s Siena teeming with seduction and spycraft." —Chris Pavone, New York Times bestselling author of The Travelers and The Expats

"The story plays like a confectionary Hollywood romance with some deeper notes reminiscent of John le Carré and Henry James. Scottie is a resilient main character who might have been played by Grace Kelly or Audrey Hepburn in a 1950s movie adaptation of this entertainingly subversive take on that seemingly innocent period." - Publishers Weekly

“Set in Siena in 1956, this debut novel is a spy thriller, comedy of manners, and valentine to Italy, spiked with forbidden sex and political skulduggery [...] The ending is unexpected, with the author displaying a sophisticated, nuanced view of love and marriage that feels very modern. Or maybe it's just Italian.” — Kirkus Reviews

About Christina Lynch

Christina Lynch’s picaresque journey includes chapters in Chicago and at Harvard, where she was an editor on the Harvard Lampoon. She was the Milan correspondent for W magazine and Women’s Wear Daily, and disappeared for four years in Tuscany. In L.A. she was on the writing staff of Unhappily Ever After; Encore, Encore; The Dead Zone and Wildfire. She now lives in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. She is the co-author of two novels under the pen name Magnus Flyte. She teaches at College of the Sequoias. In her own name, Lynch is the author of The Italian Party and Sally Brady's Italian Adventure.

About Edoardo Ballerini

Edoardo Ballerini is an American writer, director, film producer and actor.  He has won many awards for his audiobook narration; within only a few years after beginning his narrating career, he won several AudioFile Earphones Awards for his work, including Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve: How The World Became Modern, Jodi Picoult’s The Storyteller and Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins.   He narrated Kenzaburo Oe’s Nobel Prize Winning Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids, Joseph Finder’s The Moscow Club as well as works by John Edward and Daniel Stashower.   In television and film, he is best known for his role in The Sopranos, 24, I Shot Andy Warhol, Dinner Rush and Romeo Must Die. The silky-voiced Ballerini is trained in theater and continues to do much work on stage.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Berit☀️✨ on March 20, 2018

4.5 Fantastico Stars 🌟🌟🌟🌟.5 Grande Successo! this book was an unexpected Gem for me....Siena,Italy 1956....Two Young newly married Americans.... full of secrets and hope.... Scottie and Michael are newly married.... both of them came to the marriage with many secrets and for different reasons.... Mich......more

Goodreads review by Angela M on March 20, 2018

Scottie is beautiful, broke and keeps a big secret about herself from her new husband. Michael is handsome, thought she had money and has a couple of very big secrets of his own that he keeps from his new wife. This would make a great movie as the truth slowly is revealed. Each believed the other wa......more

Goodreads review by Jennifer ~ TarHeelReader on March 16, 2018

4 adventurous spy stars with a side of Italy! 🇮🇹 ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ The Italian Party was a fun ride through the 1950s Italian countryside. It only turned serious in the last couple chapters. Scottie and Michael are recently married, and they move to Siena so that Michael can open a business. Scottie has m......more

Goodreads review by Debra on February 18, 2018

3.5 stars Scottie and Michael are newlyweds living in Tuscany in the 1950's. What could be better! Sound like the adventure of a lifetime and in many ways, it is. But they both have secrets they are keeping from the other. They really didn't know each other for too long before they decided to get mar......more


Quotes

"Imagine Beautiful Ruins plus horses; Toujours Provence with spies, a mystery and sex. The Italian Party is a fizzy, page-turning delight that begs for a Campari and soda!" —Julia Claiborne Johnson, author of Be Frank With Me

"Christina Lynch’s hapless American newly-weds give us plenty to worry about as they dig their way into the dark heart of Italy (1956) and into the even darker heart of the CIA. They give us plenty to laugh about, too, in this volatile mixture of old-world charm and cold-war politics." —Bob Hellenga, author of The Fall of a Sparrow