‘You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.’ Young, impressionable Lucy Honeychurch arrives in Italy for the first time, dependent on a Baedeker travel guide and her stern chaperone, Miss Bartlett. Staying at the Pension Bertolini, where a group of unusual characters come together, Lucy explores the basilicas and piazzas of Florence, the romantic charm of Italy beginning to work on her. And then one day, on a hill of violets overlooking the city, an encounter with passionate George Emerson opens Lucy’s eyes to the possibility of a life beyond the constraints of her middle-class upbringing. Back in England, among the tennis courts and manicured lawns of home, Lucy tries to regain the respectable path laid out for her. But when she meets George again, she is torn between social obligation and the desire for a different sort of life. Can she learn how to be true to herself, before the possibility of a life of love and beauty slips through her fingers?
