Fiction - Love Falls

The Age

Saturday July 28, 2007

Lorien Kaye

Love Falls

Esther Freud

Bloomsbury, $29.95

A RITES-OF-PASSAGE, coming-of-age story set in Tuscany about a teenager's sexual awakening might promise enjoyable escapism but this is a promise neither made nor kept in Love Falls. Seventeen-year-old Lara Riley travels to Tuscany with the father she barely knows for a few weeks of summer holiday. It is 1981, and Charles and Diana's wedding is imminent. Lara doesn't believe in the seemingly perfect romance (and the reader knows the irony of that "fairytale" wedding) but she is intent on pursuing her own love affair with Kip Willoughby, the handsome son and heir of a ramshackle family living nearby.

Esther Freud (Sigmund's great-granddaughter and Lucien's daughter) seeds this seemingly idyllic setting and set-up with difficulties and nastiness. Lara's father's old friend with whom they're staying is dying; extramarital affairs cause tension and Lara is prey to one of the Willougbys. Her sexual awakening is at once exciting and terrifying.

Freud, author of Hideous Kinky, is marvellous at creating a languid atmosphere with a constant feeling of expectation. Lara's relationship with her father is subtly drawn. But the attraction between Lara and Kip never convinces and the passages about Lara's childhood don't gel. The biggest flaw is the distance engendered by the entirely believable reticence Freud has given Lara. It's as if the dampener on the piano has been sustained too long.