Playing with Fire
Tess Gerritsen
Fascism, nazis, WWII, Italy…the setting is almost a cliché, it has been used by so many authors in so many books.
Synopsis
A beautiful violinist is haunted by a very old piece of music she finds in a strange antique shop in Rome.
The first time Julia Ansdell picks up The Incendio Waltz, she knows it’s a strikingly unusual composition. But while playing the piece, Julia blacks out and awakens to find her young daughter implicated in acts of surprising violence. And when she travels to Venice to find the previous owner of the music, she uncovers a dark secret that involves dangerously powerful people—a family who would stop at nothing to keep Julia from bringing the truth to light.
Richard says
The synopsis above does not do justice to the story which is much more. Scary, haunting, thrilling and attention-grabbing, it’s the tale of a mother and her daughter engaged in question-demanding relationship. Whenever, the mother, a musician, plays a piece of music she discovered in an old bookstore, her daughter seems to engage in horrific acts, harmful and dangerous. The grandmother had been diagnosed as mentally ill; the mother now fears she may have inherited the medical issues. And yet, she seems to act rationally and very capably but when she plays the music….
Gerritsen weaves a descriptive tale blending history into her narrative. It is a story of Fascist antisemitic Italy during the Mussolini era and how Italy’s history of anti-semitism has redeemable and forgivable aspects to it. But extermination of Jews still took place though not comparable to that of other places in Poland and in Germany.
There’s a story of love, culture and beautiful artistry mixed with the anti-semitic brutality and cruelty written about by so many authors that make the story somewhat cliched.
The story takes on the cloak of a thriller when the mother travels to Italy to hunt for the real story behind the musical piece.
Gerritsen grabs the read and weaves all kinds of emotions through her tale. There is romance, moments of hope, hope of escape, and of evasion, but these wartime stories often end in tragedy and heartbreak.
It is a story that carries readers along, educating them and giving them another view of how in a world where many are evil or become evil because of circumstances. Still, there are many people whose better angels rise above their surrounding conditions to levels of surprising good and redemption. Enough Italians treated Jews differently making the country sound like it may have tried to rise above the malevolence of others.
Gerritsen encourages readers to learn more about how Italian anti-semitism was different:
Susan Zucotti, The Italians and the Holocaust. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.
Renzo De Felice, The Jews in Fascist Italy. New York: Enigma Books, 2001.
“The Holocaust in Italy,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. ushmm.org/learn/mapping-initiatives/geographics-of-the-holocaust/the-holocaust-in-italy
“Risiera di San Sabba.” Museum website: http://www.risierasansabba.it/english.
