In an alternate Italy in World War 2, a nine year old boy
has been sent to spend the summer with his grandmother in her rural home,
safely away from the fighting and bombings. His father is in the army, and his
mother is recovering from giving birth. He misses his family and friends, and
is somewhat bored by country life. Then one day an enemy plane comes screaming
over the village and crashes into the bay. This event turns everything upside
down.
That night, a quiet knock comes on the grandmother’s back
door. It’s an old friend of hers, needing help. The boy gets multiple shocks
that night; the enemy pilot is alive, his grandmother is capable of sewing up
people, the old friend is a faun, and there is an overgrown garden of stone
monsters in the woods where the other villagers never go.
As the days go by with the pilot healing, the boy explores
both the stone monsters and his grandmother’s past. It’s a magical time for
him, but reality intrudes constantly; a major arrives with a unit of men, bent
of locating the missing enemy pilot. They make the boy’s explorations difficult
to say the least. Between keeping the pilot hidden and trying to figure out
what the inscriptions of the stone monsters mean, he and his grandmother have their
hands full. And it will turn out that both those endeavors have a common
answer.
The prose is so stunningly beautiful that it took my breath
away. I’d be willing to say that this book will be a new classic; it’s up there
with Ray Bradbury, C.S. Lewis, J.M. Barrie, and Charles de Lint. The story
unfolds slowly but steadily. It’s as much an adventure of the mind as of the
body. Told by the narrator in adulthood but with the eyes of a nine year old,
it’s an enchanted tale, suitable for kids to adults.
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This in no way influenced my review.
With your review this becomes a must read!
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