Andrea Lee Lee is the author of "Lost Hearts in Italy." Photo by Paolo Sacchi.
By Milena Vercellino
Published: 2006-11-01 "W hat I like to investigate when I write is what people dream about,” says author Andrea Lee. “What fascinates me is fantasy, the dream of being away, the state of being foreign, of being apart.” Lee’s first novel in 20 years, “Lost Hearts in Italy,” explores the geometry of an ill-fated love triangle that begins in Rome, moves forward in time to Turin, and counts any number of luxurious European settings. Betrayal and deception lead Americans abroad to fall from innocence. A feeling of being adrift thrusts the novel’s naïve central character, Mira Ward, into a torrid affair with a predatory older Italian billionaire. The reader enters the timeline of the story backwards, beginning with the end of the affair. Writing in The Guardian, critic Jon Elek has called the novel a “comprehending and nuanced portrayal,” praising Lee as “a wise and graceful writer.” Her fictional world, he added, “is obsessively glamorous, abounding in lush collegiate squares, grand hotels, grands prix, fine restaurants and designer clothes.” Other critics were less generous, however, with The New York Times assailing her “somewhat tired tropes.” Times of London literary editor Erica Wagner, who reviewed the novel for the paper, said of Lee's characters, “I kept wondering why I was bothering with these people …” (See review under Book Club, home page). The expatriate condition surfaces in virtually all of Lee’s books. It is not only one of her favorite subjects, but also an autobiographical trait. Born in Philadelphia and educated at Harvard, Lee has lived in Turin for over a decade. Not even her adopted home keeps her in one place. She often spends long periods in Madagascar with her Italian husband, her 11-year old son, and her daughter, a student at Harvard. Lee made her acclaimed debut in 1981 with a journalistic reflection on life in the Soviet Union called “Russian Journal.” The book came after a 1978 stint in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and Moscow, where she attended Moscow State University (she was 25 at the time). It was nominated for a National Book Award. In 1984, she published her first novel, “Sarah Phillips,” about a young black woman’s Philadelphia childhood. It was also highly praised. In 2002, Lee turned to expatriate life with a collection of short stories, “Interesting Women,” which chronicled the lives of 13 American women living abroad (most of the stories were originally written for The New Yorker magazine). They were set in Milan, Turin, Madagascar, and Honduras, and probed the ambiguities of cultural displacement, with its joys, confusion, and moments of ennui. The New York Times called the stories “richly textured and irresistibly readable,” labeling her “a gorgeous writer.” Over the years, Lee’s fiction and non-fiction writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Time and The Oxford American. She’s fond of the short story form and her novels are constructed mostly from episodes. She cites Australian novelist Helen Garner, who often shifts lyrically between characters and between present and past tense, as an influence. In “Lost Hearts,” Lee says she aimed “to explore an impressionistic style” — she was reading Garner’s 1984 “The Children’s Bach” at the time — “and the possibility of saying a lot with a few words and through many voices.” Milena Vercellino chatted with her. Was “Lost Hearts in Italy” your idea for the novel’s title or was mentioning Italy a way to make the story more attractive? Writing a book is almost like playing, the title was part of the playing. I really wanted to write a book with a melodramatic title. It was part of my playing. I asked myself: “What is the most melodramatic title I can think of?” I almost called it “Lost Hearts in Italy — A Melodrama.” |
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September 9, 2010 | Rome, Italy | Partly Cloudy, 19°C
