Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

History as filigree

Dominic Smith’s sixth novel
by
June 2023, no. 454

Return to Valetto by Dominic Smith

Allen & Unwin, $32.99 hb, 368pp

History as filigree

Dominic Smith’s sixth novel
by
June 2023, no. 454

A few pages in to Return to Valetto, the narrator Hugh Fisher is on a train from Rome to Orvieto and is being eyed suspiciously by an elderly Italian woman, who can see the photograph of himself with his daughter that he is using as a bookmark:

I looked up from my book and into her Old Testament face. Mia figlia, I said, my daughter. For good measure, I told her in Italian that I was a widower, that it had taken me the better part of five years to remove my wedding band, that Susan was getting her PhD in economics at Oxford … This information passed through her like a muscle relaxant as she returned to knitting a tiny mauve sock.

At this point I remembered what sort of writer Dominic Smith is: his style is an irresistible combination of sophisticated and engaging. Either the muscle relaxant or, more likely, the tiny mauve sock reminded me of how much I was likely to enjoy the company of this particular writer’s mind, and nothing in the subsequent pages was a disappointment. This passage is also a little masterpiece of technique: it gives us a snapshot of Hugh Fisher in one brief but vividly imagined and cinematic cameo.

Return to Valetto

Return to Valetto

by Dominic Smith

Allen & Unwin, $32.99 hb, 368pp

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.