The Lovers

Cognetti (The Eight Mountains) delivers a beautiful meditation on nature, love, and renewal in the Alps. A 40-year-old writer, Fausto, separates from his wife and leaves Milan for the Fontana Fredda mountains where he takes a job at a restaurant called Babette’s Feast, the namesake of its fellow city transplant owner, who runs the place after divorcing her former“mountain man” husband, Santorso, who returns occasionally to dine there. Silvia, a 27-year-old waitress Cognetti describes as having “the air of a world traveler,” catches his eye and eventually they become lovers. Drawing on the naturalism of Jack London (Fausto is a fan), Cognetti describes the landscape as a witness to the whims of fate as the lovers break apart (“And around Fontana Fredda the mountains existed, altogether indifferent to the dreams of these human beings, and would continue to exist when they woke up”). Luczkiw acknowledges the novel’s surface-level simplicity in a translator’s note, and indeed the premise might cause readers’ eyes to roll, but Cognetti adds depth by making the natural world a character of its own and by setting up an intriguing mirror effect between the two couples. This atmospheric story offers plenty of surprises. Agent: Renata Petrusheva, Malatesta Literary Agency. (June)