Parrot Time Magazine

Waking Isabella: Because beauty can't sleep forever
by Melissa Muldoon
Language: English / Italian / French
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This review is for Melissa Muldoon's second Italian novel, Waking Isabella. It is a mix of history, mystery, and romance, taking our main character, Nora, back to Italy, which she had first visited several years before.

It starts innocently enough when Nora, feeling like her life is in a rut after a failed marriage, gets a text message one day from a long-time friend. This brings back some forgotten memories of travelling and a desire to see Italy again. So she joins a documentary making contest which gives her money and reason to travel to Arezzo, Italy. There, she plans to trace what happened to the Tuscany princess Isabella de' Medici.

As she travels and researches, she meets many characters, both dead and alive, and falls in love again. It might sound cliche, but Melissa does a fantastic job of storytelling while mixing plenty of history and language to enrich the plot.

Actually, plots. I had read the previous book, Dreaming Sophia, (and reviewed it here) so I had an idea of what to expect in terms of style of writing. Dreaming Sophia made me fall in love with Italy again myself. I had travelled there a few times while I was in my late teens and early twenties, and the descriptions of looks, sounds, and smells took me back easily.

In that book, there was really only one plot: following Sophia on her journey to Italy and her life over a few years there. Everything was seen from her point of view and only her thoughts known to us.

In Waking Isabella, there are multiple plots and we hear the thoughts of several characters. This gave us varied views of the situations as well as other stories to follow. I don't think either storytelling method is better, just different.

Another note is that while Sophia had never been to Italy and only knew what her parents told her, Nora had spent some time there with her friend, enough to have picked up much of the lifestyle and language. This puts us into Italy very quickly, while Sophia took several chapters.

Waking Isabella is set in Arezzo, Tuscany. If you haven't been to Italy, Tuscany is the region that holds the popular cities of Florence, Pisa, and Siena. While I have visited all three before, as well as Urbino (a small town in the mountains of Tuscany), I have never been to Arezzo. The descriptions almost perfectly matched my memories of the larger region, however.

You don't have to have been to Italy to appreciate the books, however. Far from it. Melissa brings the country to life with her vivid descriptions and subtle weaving of narrative with the language. I was very pleased to find that I could understand most of the Italian, meaning I had not completely forgotten all of it. This is of special note to language learners: Italian and French are "spoken" in the books between characters and as part of the narration. I feel it was done smoothly and there is almost always an immediate translation, it might upset some who are not language enthusiasts.

I have avoided revealing too much of the plot because I don't want the reader's own experience to be spoiled. I can, however, give something of a hint.

Isabella de' Medici died "unexpectedly" at the age of 34, although many believe she was murdered by her husband. Nora wonders what Isabella might tell if she could speak now and so part of her fancy is that the documentary might awaken some facts. So what does Nora find out at the end of her search?

"Waking Isabella", the title, also works as a double meaning. A "wake" is something your perform for someone who has died to say goodbye to them in a formal way, normally as an event with other people.

I can definitely recommend Waking Isabella as a great read because it mixes aspect of history, mystery, romance, travel, and language. And be sure to read Dreaming Sophia as well, although it doesn't matter which you read first. The two books are completely unrelated.