Short Takes

A Stopover in Venice
By Kathryn Walker
Knopf, 305 pp., $24.95

Fairy tales do come true. Here the princess plucks herself out of her dreary prison and stumbles on a fairy godmother, who invites her into an enchanted wonderland. Instead of scampering mice, there is a charming Chihuahua, who leads the desperate young woman, Nel, to Lucy, an aged countess who lives in a haunted Venetian palazzo.

Married to a self-absorbed rock star, Nel feels she has disappeared into his life. On a European tour, where she serves in his adoring retinue ("the cartoon wife"), she simply takes off. As she predicted, her husband hardly notices. Soon she is whisked away to help unravel a mystery surrounding the frescoes in what was, in the early 16th century, a convent for noblewomen. In searching for the artist who made the frescoes, Nel, along with Matteo (yes, there is a prince), a handsome Italian art conservator, discovers a treasure trove of letters, diaries, precious clothes, artworks, and gems. From these clues, they construct a life for a brilliant young woman who was the lover and wife of the elusive Venetian master Giorgione.

While the art project is interesting, it is the subtle recollections and recognitions of the thoughtful, sympathetic heroine that give this romance its heft and heart. Kathryn Walker, an accomplished actress (who was married to James Taylor for 10 years), writes feelingly of the slow burn experienced by those who get too close to a star. She charts her feelings with amazing candor and insight: her willing devotion and self-obliteration, her gradual resentment and disappointment, her final release and reinvention. She beautifully describes the bitter decline of the marriage - "He took his heart away and marooned me in the desolation of behavior. He turned out the lights, one by one" - and just as eloquently her own sweet salvation.

Train to Trieste
By Domnica Radulescu
Knopf, 305 pp., $23.95

Like the heroine of her debut novel, Domnica Radulescu escaped from Romania in the early 1980s, studied literature at the University of Chicago, and is a smart, sensitive, passionate, and beautiful woman.

Hungry for love and life, 17-year-old Mona falls deeply in love with Mihai. But living in Communist Romania ("a stupid little dictatorship"), where everyone is suspicious of everyone else, she is unsure of who he is. He could be secret police, he could be a political activist (like her father), he could be cheating on her. Despite her constant fears, she cannot stay out of his bed. But when her father is directly threatened and her own life is in danger, she is encouraged to flee the country. Leaving Mihai without a goodbye, she takes the train to Bucharest, then hitchhikes to Rome (she never takes a train to Trieste). In Rome, she experiences the first unexpected sound of freedom, which "chuckles" and "flutters."

She eventually arrives in Chicago, where she is disgusted by her sponsors, fundamentalist Christians, who try to convert her, but charmed by her Mexican co-worker, who comforts her and cooks for her. Soon, she is taking university courses, bringing her parents to join her in Chicago, marrying a psychology student, having a child, then another. After her marriage ends and the Ceausescus are murdered in a bloody revolution, she returns to her homeland to find out who her first and only love, Mihai, really was. Radulescu's novel, sprung from an autobiographical impulse, powerfully combines the intensity of first love, the confusion of politics, and the melancholy of exile.

Barbara Fisher is a freelance critic who lives in New York.