Casa Rossa 
by Francesca Marciano. 
Pantheon Books, 2002. 

Francesca Marciano the author of the critically acclaimed Rules of the Wild again gives readers a glorious portrait of intense emotions: beauty, confusion, love, betrayal, heartache, and grand glamour in Casa Rossa. Three generations of 20th century Italian women come together in an enthralling, rich, and insightful portrait. Set in Puglia around a red stone farmhouse the novel expands and interweaves 60 years of Italy’s history. In Casa Rossa the readers are allowed to be the silent voyeurs of the Strada family who are brought hauntingly into being through Marciano’s obvious vision and literary genius. In a contemporary perspective, Marciano writes with the style of a mature novelist skillfully and vividly drawing on an Italy we have not seen laid out quite like this before. 

The writing is so intelligent and fast it is like a great film. Marciano transports the reader to another place in time where everyday reality is subjugated to the reality Marciano has created. Readers are given the privilege to participate and walk through the drama between artist and muse during World War II; experience the Roman La Dolce Vita of the 1950s and the political instability and terrorism of Italy in the 1970s; as well as partake in the drama of New York City’s heady art world of the 1980s. 

In Casa Rossa, family secrets collide during suspenseful and emotional moments brought out with Marciano’s fluid writing style. Marciano’s prose is romantic, powerful, and intense like the famous painting by John Singleton Copley Watson and The Shark, 1778 we are shocked by its beauty, at once under its spell we are drawn in, stop, contemplate and discover a gripping balance of intensity and subtly that only a master artist can achieve. Marciano has created another brilliant work which is mentally romantic, heroic, as well as scandalous encompassing interlaced traditional Southern Italian elements she is able to bridge the literary gap between word and image in a way unseen since Pier Paolo Pasolini. 

Casa Rossa 

by Francesca Marciano

Pantheon Books/ $25.00 ISBN: 0-375-42123-8