Linda Lappin

The Etruscan by Linda Lappin
Reviewed by Pat Aakhus
Winter 2005 The Southern Indiana Review

The Etruscan by Linda Lappin is an intelligent, atmospheric novel with finely drawn characters and beautiful language and style. It is not easy to put down. The feminist protagonist Harriet falls in love with a charismatic count, extraordinary in the tradition of Cornelius Agrippa, Cagliostro or Conte de St. Germaine, who materializes and disappears into the Etruscan landscape. Her well bred friends from Russell Square manage to save her from her fatal obsession by wiping out all evidence of his improbable existence, removing her from the wild landscape (wild at least to an American and her proper English friends), while simultaneously driving Harriet into madness and a long residence in a mental institution.
This engaging story is told from the point of view of the Bloomsbury friends, whose own dark secrets are incidentally revealed (but only to us) as they read her personal journal of the love affair. The long hidden guilty truths remain hidden, and as we learn about them, as Harriet stalks her phantasm-lover, the solution to the mystery which propels the novel retreats. Is the Conte Federigo Del Re faithful; is he a real count, or even a real man; a fantasy or an Etruscan ghost? This shape-shifting Rochester will not be tracked down, unmasked or domesticated.
Like the ephemeral count and the exotic landscape, Harriet is a fascinating, vivid character. To what extent are her civilized friends responsible for her affair, her madness? Certainly they create an opium addiction which makes Harriet “manageable,” protecting themselves from incriminating revelations about their own actions. Lappin handles this weaving of related pasts deftly, providing one of the most interesting aspects of the novel. Because the novel is primarily told from the point of view of “disinterested” characters reading Harriet’s journal, a strong sense of voyeurism pervades the narrative. Of course we too are culpable, racing through the pages to find the Conte Federigo Del Re, hoping that he will not disappoint us and show up one more time in some surprising incarnation.
Harriet is an American, and therefore an outsider, notwithstanding her predilection for Turkish silk trousers, outspokenness and photographing Etruscan tombs. She might have been lifted from one of Katherine Mansfield’s short stories or is perhaps an eccentric portrait of Mansfield herself. For she is neither passive nor paralyzed like many of Mansfield’s or Woolf’s heroines, nor self victimizing like Chopin’s. But Lappin is a twenty-first century novelist and although the first wave of feminism is far behind us, not all has been resolved. While possessed of a fortune and entrée into European society, still Harriet is a victim of abuse and of the machinations of her controlling upper class cousins. It is a working class woman who ultimately saves her, rescuing Harriet’s past, and therefore her identity.
Lappin has done an admirable job providing authenticity in every detail of time and setting, while providing provocative questions about the extent to which women are driven to hide abuse, and the effects of that suppression. There is no preaching in this novel; the issues are conveyed subtly and believably. Harriet would have had some things to discuss with Virginia Woolf, a victim of sexual abuse plagued by clinical depression throughout her life, had such things been discussed in Bloomsbury.
Lappin’s elegant prose simultaneously creates suspense and evokes a precise setting in which supernatural events are realistically grounded. Her polished style and subtly achieved atmosphere effects recall the works of M. R. James and the Brontes; her special effects are psychological, driven by landscape, deftly drawn interiors and characters, rather than spectacle. In a time when the grotesque and the bizarre comprise plot and character in so much of contemporary literature, Harriet’s sexy Count who dresses up as a wild boar, supplies her with mushrooms, porcupines and a carnelian ring is a refreshing change.

“He raised the lantern to a niche, hollowed in the wall, where the remains of a fresco were barely visible, half-eaten by the moss, but I could clearly discern the outline of a ship. I knew what it was: the ship of death. I had seen the small model of one in his study, “La nave della morte,” I murmured, pointing to the image. The Count nodded. “Each one of us much prepare his ship,” he said, “and load it up with wine and grain and oil, for the long journey home.”
Now he shone the light towards the back wall of the tomb where an even larger doorway stood. Approaching it, I saw that it was not a real door at all, but merely an image sculpted in the wall. I asked f the builder had meant to add another chamber.
“No,” he said. “That is the door of the soul through which the dead exited our world and sailed beyond time. Sometimes you find such doors carved in the rock, other times only painted.”
I reached out to run my hand across the chill stone surface. The tomb wall was beaded with cold drops of moisture, and my hand left a greasy streak upon the stone. “What did they envision on the other side? I asked.
The Count set the lantern down at the base of the carved doorway. The flame flared high and our shadows danced, huge, then merged on the tomb wall. He took a step toward me and intoned in a low voice, “Beyond that door lies an unknown world, where men and women…” here he paused like a skilful actor for dramatic effect. His face glowed orange in the lamplight, “…where even you and I…can become immortal, if we choose.” (pg. 98)

With the astonishing success of Da Vinci Code, it is clear that the supernatural in a context of religion, art and history, is of immense interest to many readers. Both novels begin with an art work held in museums (the Louvre and British Museum), but there the similarities end. Lappin’s artfully written novel inhabits a supernatural landscape, but alludes subtly to hints of Etruscan culture, rather than appropriating New Age fabricated pseudo-legend. Character rather than spectacle drives this first novel, and Lappin’s gift for atmosphere places her amongst the finest writers of gothic art, not genre.

THE ETRUSCAN
Author: Lappin, Linda
Kirkus Discovery Reviews


Review Date: AUGUST 29, 2005
Publisher:Wynkin deWorde (225 pp.)
Price (hardback): 20.00 Euro
Publication Date: July 2004
ISBN: 1-904893-00-7
ISBN (hardback): 1-904893-00-7
Category: AUTHORS
Classification: FICTION

In this haunting literary gothic novel, American photographer Harriet Sackett barely escapes with her life after traveling to a small Italian village.

After a disappointing love affair, Harriet journeys to the country village of Vitorchiano to research and photograph Etruscan tombs. She rents a farmhouse from the mysterious Count Federigo Del Re, resident of the nearby run-down castle. Harriet’s letters—with their romantic descriptions of the charming farmhouse and surrounding countryside—intrigue her closest friend Sarah. But when Sarah, her husband Stephen (also Harriet’s cousin) and George, a family friend, encounter Harriet a few months later, they find her drastically changed. Sarah thinks Harriet’s bewitched, and Stephen decides to send their trusted housekeeper, Mrs. Parsons, to look after her. Mrs. Parsons finds Harriet on the brink of insanity, in a dark and dank place bearing no resemblance to the enchanting cottage described in the letters. The only clue to what has transpired is Harriet’s diary; Stephen and George try to verify the facts contained in the diary, with little success. Readers will devour the tantalizing words of the diary and will become absorbed in guilty, voyeuristic fascination as Harriet describes her increasing obsession with the Count and the terrible consequences. Considering Harriet’s state, the friends are unsure how much of the diary is real and how much is the product of a mind skirting the edges of sanity. As the unraveling of Harriet’s mind is revealed, so to are the secrets between Sarah, Stephen, George, Mrs. Parsons and Harriet, which are no less fascinating than the diary. Mystery, fear, betrayal and uncertainty abound as Harriet’s story unfolds against the backdrop of Etruscan tombs and cemeteries. Influenced by D.H. Lawrence’s travelogue Etruscan Places, Lappin elegantly brings the characters, Italian countryside and surroundings to life in vivid, engrossing prose.

A solid, well-written tale wrought in entrancing detail.

Book of the Week....Bookview, Ireland
July 2004
The thin line between illusion and reality is captured in Linda Lappin's account of an American woman's experiences in 1920s Tuscany. Admittedly photographer Harriet Sackett is not an average woman of the 1920s; always dressing in trousers to facilitate her peripatetic lifestyle, and with the fashionable 1920s bob, she cuts an unusual figure in rural Italy when she goes in search of Etruscan tombs. Past the first flush of youth, Harriet finds herself inexorably drawn towards her landlord, Count Federigo Del Re, a man whom she initially mistakes for a peasant farmer but a man who is able to lead her into realms of consciousness which she has never before experienced.
The surreal relationship between the pair, and the cast of characters who people the Count's world, are in marked contrast to Harriet's own family in London. The conventionality of her cousin Stephen and his wife, Sarah, with their house on Russell Square and their faithful housekeeper Mrs Parsons nicely counterbalances the far from conventional happenings among the Etruscan tombs of Tuscany. Here there are sites dating back centuries where Harriet has "out of time" experiences; mushrooms with special properties form a major part of the local diet and Maria, Harriet's housekeeper, rids her of the evil eye. However as the story unfolds Linda Lappin contrives to show how the two worlds overlap, the apparent correctness of Stephen and Sarah, and Harriet's would-be suitor George Wimbly belying their previous unorthodox behaviour. Harriet's final predicament can to some extent be laid at the doors of both Stephen and George, and it is the women who emerge the stronger although they appear to have been under the domination of the men in their lives throughout the narrative.
Harriet, Sarah and Ethel Parsons are all determined, though for different reasons, that the episode in Tuscany will not be forgotten and while the men are intent on destroying any evidence, written or photographic, these three over a long number of years preserve the truth, whatever that is.