Irene Sartori sells foreclosed houses\u2014from a palazzo in smoldering Rome to an expensive property in sinking Venice\u2014to wealthy foreigners impervious to the dystopian climate catastrophe befalling Europe. Renowned in her field, Irene gets a mysterious call beckoning her to help sell an \u201cunsellable\u201d property in her hometown of Milan. The enchanting yet haunting spot, known as Via Saterna, is defined by its central staircase, giving the building a circular interior that defies its ordinary square-shaped exterior: \u201cThe Via Saterna project is based on that deception, on the assurance of a certain presumption in the eye of an onlooker and the subsequent unmasking of preconception, the crumbling of logical deduction.\u201d Most intriguing, however, is Via Saterna\u2019s unlikely inhabitant, Lidia, whose mysterious relationship to the house quickly takes over Irene\u2019s life. As Irene tries to piece together the intertwined history of Lidia and Via Saterna, another narrative unfolds: one that begins decades prior when, according to the narrator, Lidia had a fatal fall down the house\u2019s stairwell. The two concentric narratives\u2014one moving forward in time and the other moving backward\u2014create a gripping yet dizzying story that forces the reader to question its every detail. Both narratives oscillate between themes of birth and death, balancing the puzzle of Lidia\u2019s alleged death with Irene\u2019s personal journey into motherhood, which emphasizes the circularity of the novel\u2019s timeline. The plot, like the house, is dotted with circular and geometric imagery: \u201cI had waited forty years for the circle to close,\u201d says the house\u2019s owner as the novel ends.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Irene Sartori sells foreclosed houses\u2014from a palazzo in smoldering Rome to an expensive property in sinking Venice\u2014to wealthy foreigners impervious to the dystopian climate catastrophe befalling Europe. Renowned in her field, Irene gets a mysterious call beckoning her to help sell an \u201cunsellable\u201d property in her hometown of Milan. The enchanting yet haunting spot, known […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6013"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}