9.5/10

"We reflect a complex world and, I don’t doubt, a complex heaven when we get there."

1999 in Italy, fifteen-year-old Nico gets a week’s suspension from school and his grandfather includes a history lesson punishment for him too.
Nico's grandfather, Nonno Paolo is sick and hospitalized, he wrote a tale, his tale in 1943 in five parts, and every day he gives one piece to Nico to read, only for Nico!

"This is the untold story of your family. Our recent history. Mine mostly. No dark secret left unrevealed. No cruel deed. No betrayal. No … No blood spilt without it leaving a stain."

The story of young Paolo is so much engaging, fascinating, and terrifying that Nico, who hates history, is hooked.

Paolo's house had a cellar that could be used to hide two Jewish siblings on the run from the Germans. He had to act quickly, as the SS were hot on their trail. Despite the risk, Paolo chose to help them and kept them safe, after that his life was changed forever.

Paolo was telling the story of several different people. He was imagining the conversations they had when they weren't there. From the Jewish brother and sister's point of view, a priest, an old doctor, and even soldiers, the traitors.

"They'd kill you twice over even if you never did a thing. Jew and a homo."

OMG, this story was heartbreaking. I cannot believe how sad, yet beautiful, it was. It was about people who were devastated and broken by a war they had no desire to be in. I am so moved by the choices they had to make; it was truly heartbreaking.
And the ending was out of words, unpredictable, yet so perfect.

I received the DRC from Netgalley (thank you Canongate) and besides reading my Kindle file, I also listened to the audiobook narrated by Richard Armitage, he is fantastic and reading so emotionally, I'm already searching for his other books.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book. I have chosen to write this honest review voluntarily and it reflects my personal opinion.
This book is written as though a grandfather has written his wartime story and given it to his grandson to read but I didn't think this was conveyed particularly well in the historical sections where it came across as a straightforward narrative; I didn't understand the reason for using this as the vehicle for the story. Throughout the story there are many details of journeys which read as a map or journey planner, I thought these lists of road names and addresses were distracting page-fillers which didn't add anything to the story. The final pages tried to link current / recent behaviours to the discrimination of wartime and included comments about Brexit; I thought this was inappropriate and I didn't like the author using his book as a way of airing his beliefs. These elements spoilt the novel for me although I thought the fictional story was good, describing the fears and horrors of wartime very well and meriting a high rating so I have given it a medium 3 stars.

Such a fantastic tale !

I couldn’t put it down and was completely captivating from the first page to the last !!

Thank you netgalley and the author for the opportunity to read this

A well written, story that captures the mood of occupied Venice during WW2. The characters come alive and the split-timing of the narrative adds to the intrigue. Atmospheric and well paced, altogether a thoroughly enjoyable book.

Super thriller set in Venice during the Nazi occupation. A young man gets a one week suspension from school and his grandfather gives him the family history across five instalments. The story moves between the period story and the reaction of the young man and his discussions with his grandfather between instalments. Well crafted and set in period, this is an enthralling thriller.

15 year old Nico is involved in a bullying incident at school. When his nonno Paulo hears about it, he gives Nico something to read. This is an account of something that happened to Paulo during WW2. What follows is an engrossing story interspersed with Nico's musings on what he has read.

This is a stunningly good book which is relevant to what is going on today, not only in Italy where the far right are once again on the rise, but all over the world. We learn of how Paulo becomes involved in hiding two young Jewish people in Nazi occupied Europe and what happens to them and other partisans. The tension builds up as the partisans plan an attack on some of the Nazi elite. I hardly drew a breath while i was reading it. I was completely transported to wartime Venice.

The descriptions of Venice are amazingly good. This is not the modern Venice of tourists and tourist traps but a living, breathing city of back streets and slums. Characterisation is excellent and I found myself in tears at what happens to some of them as to me they had become so real. As well as that, we have the vivid descriptions of the Jacquard weaving that nonno Paulo's family made a living from. This is beautifully detailed.

All in all, a brilliant book which I cannot recommend highly enough. Read it! Thanks to NetGalley and Canongate for the ARC.

I really loved this book which had me gripped from the very first page. Set in 2 time frames it is the story of Nico Uccello, a young Venetian and that of his Grandfather, Nonno Paolo.
15 year old Nico’s Grandfather is very ill in hospital and when Nico visits, his Grandfather hands him a package which is part of his life story. He urges Nico to read it after hearing how his grandson has been reprimanded at school for bullying another pupil.
Nico starts to read and is transported back to the war years in Venice when many atrocities happened and ordinary people were forced to make extraordinary choices. He returns to the hospital and Paolo gives him the second instalment and tell him there are three more.
This was a moving and heartbreaking story which was beautifully written and moved effortlessly between the two time frames. In fact the tension was so great in the war period that it was a relief when the author moved back to Nico’s present day.
The characters were all so well portrayed and it became clear early on that not everything was black and white- there were many shades of grey, particularly where some characters were concerned. There was much bravery and sacrifice, particularly from the doctor and the priest and there was also betrayal. It was no wonder that after the war those involved did not want to discuss it.
I particularly enjoyed reading the descriptions of Venice and the skills used by the family using jacquard looms to weave the beautiful velvet that the Uccellos were famous for. This was so well researched- the author obviously knows Venice very well!
There are surprising revelations in the book which I didn’t foresee but the main theme seems to be how one generation passes distressing information to the next so that it is never forgotten.
Definitely a five star recommendation. Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for my advance copy

A few years ago my family & I visited the Venetian Ghetto. Before visiting I had no idea of the history of Jews in Venice & it was hugely eye opening.

The title refers to the Monument to the Partisan Woman, a tribute to the resistance fighters of Venice. I remember seeing this by the Giardini Vaporetto stop. Many pass her - she’s often drowned by the tide. And this, the author says is the point of the book - quoting Angela Merkel, ‘When the generation that survived the war is no longer with us, then we’ll find out whether we’ve learned from history.’

That sounds very worthy but this book is so, so much more. This is a thriller set in largely in WW2. We begin in 1999. Nico is from a wealthy Venetian family. His grandfather Paulo understands he has failed to stand up for a fellow student. Nico will learn from his grandfather his history of standing up. He wants Nico to know & understand his story.

This is a powerful story. It has great characters. It has so many twists & turns & a real surprise at the end. It also has Venice. The bejewelled, watery star who held her World position in time of war due to her beauty. But scratch the surface & her underbelly emerges - full of danger, people in peril, huge human cruelty & outstanding human courage during times of war.

An outstanding novel - this is not just a thriller. It’s a siren call for all that is happening in the World today. Are we brave enough to risk our lives for others? Can we stand up to tyranny? How will history judge us?

I was drawn to this book partly by its subject matter but also by its setting. I’ve been lucky enough to visit Venice on a couple of occasions, although I can’t claim the intimate knowledge of the city the author clearly possesses. I’ll admit that, because of its unique location, it hadn’t occurred to me that Venice would have been occupied by the Nazis during the Second World War. Therefore, this was an aspect of the novel I found especially intriguing.

The story of the wartime experiences of Nico’s grandfather, Paolo Uccello, and his fellow Venetians is revealed in instalments to Nico, by way of a series of letters. A little confusingly Paolo’s recollections are related in the third person, as if he was an observer rather than a participant, and include scenes and conversations to which he was not a party. Leaving that aside, the story Paolo tells is one of fear, betrayal, collaboration and wartime atrocities but also of courage.

As Nico learns more about Paolo’s experiences, he wanders the streets of Venice visiting – and photographing – some of the locations mentioned by his grandfather, such as the building that housed the SS headquarters and the site of the Jewish ghetto. He is struck by the seeming unawareness of present day visitors to the terrible events that took place in those same places fifty years before. Seeing a group of children playing football at one site, he has to stop himself shouting ‘Don’t you know what happened here? Can’t you feel the traces of all that memory?’. As it happens, the Venetians who lived through that time, including the family’s housekeeper, seem equally unwilling to talk about what went on during the occupation. Nico’s wanderings through the city give him a growing sense of past and present eliding. ‘More and more I felt I was walking through two cities at the same time. The Venice I’d grown up in. The different, darker, violent city that Nonno Paolo had known when he wasn’t much older than me.’

I liked the way his grandfather’s story makes Nico reflect on how war can make people behave. ‘That was one of the lessons he was trying to teach me: evil wasn’t special. There was no need for extraordinary villains with scars, and wicked, dark glints in their eyes. It was ordinary, mundane, a part of the city, a lurking virus within us all.’ A good example in the book of the ‘ordinary monsters’ is the character Luca Alberti, a Venetian policeman who finds himself collaborating with the Nazis. There are plenty of other memorable characters too such as Catholic priest, Filippo Garzone, and Aldo Diamante, appointed by the Nazis as leader of the Jewish community in Venice, who becomes faced with an impossible dilemma.

The book displays the author’s impressive knowledge of Venice, especially the ‘off-the-beaten track’ areas rarely visited by tourists. I loved the imaginative ways Venice, ‘the city on the water’, was described, including as ‘a precious gilded prison’ and ‘the louche old lady of the lagoon’. Not only did I learn a lot about the history of Venice and Italian politics of the period but also about the process of weaving a kind of velvet known as soprarizzo using a Jacquard loom.

The Garden of Angels is both an intriguing wartime story and a great advertisement for the wonderful city of Venice. It’s a trip to put on your bucket list. In the meantime, why not visit in literary form by adding The Garden of Angels to your TBR pile.

(This review relates to the hardback edition published in 2021)

A beautiful story of family, bravery, betrayal, and love, set predominantly in Venice during WWII and framed by a present-day narrative.

The plot moved at just the right pace and had me gripped throughout. Most of all, though, I loved the characters: the courageous members of the resistance, with their selflessness towards both friends and strangers across class and religious lines, even the "half-traitor" local police officer collaborating with the Nazis for painfully understandable reasons. Last but not most certainly not least, the city of Venice was brought to life, as vividly as any of the characters, coming alive through her inhabitants and the excellent (and never overdone) descriptions: "The city on the water ... a gilded prison too beautiful for the horrors Italy was seeing elsewhere" ... "the louche old lady of the lagoon."

What starts as a seemingly mundane story of a young boy suspended from school after a school colleague was beaten up by another boy quickly develops into a beautiful tale of wartime Venice. Visiting his Grandfather in hospital he is entrusted with a series of pages detailing his Grandfather’s wartime history. A times brutally violent but always eloquent and fascinating it has a cast of characters whose bravery shines through despite the brutal treatment meted out by both occupiers and local traitorous collaborators alike. The twist in the tale provides a clever ending to this superb novel.

Fifteen-year-old Nico, his father, and his grandfather reside in Palazzo Colombina, on Venice's Grand Canal. As Nico's grandfather, Nonno Paolo, is dying he presents Nico with five manuscripts of his life that he has been writing just for Nico's eyes. He wants Nico to understand the past and to understand himself. He sees something in Nico that he saw in himself and he wants Nico to learn from the story he has to tell.

This was such a good book. I love historical fiction, especially when it is about eras/ situations that I previously knew nothing about and this was definitely one of those books. It was so well researched and so compelling in its narrative that not only did I love reading it but I felt that I learned too. A really enjoyable read and perfect for any fans of historical fiction. This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

A brilliant read, not what I expected but really enjoyed reading this book. The book is set in Venice and is split between the present and past. In the present, Nico’s grandfather - Nonno Paolo, to whom he is very close, is disappointed to learn that Nico has been suspended from school for a week, for standing by and watching classmates attack a Jewish schoolchild. Nonno Paolo is dying in hospital and during his final days, passes a book he has been writing, on to Nico. This turns out to be his grandfather’s memoir, split into five manuscripts and set in the 1940s when Venice was occupied by the Nazis. It was very interesting reading about the Second World War from an Italian perspective.
The local priest, Filippo Garzone and Jewish doctor, Aldo Diamante, are helping the persecuted Jewish residents of the city. Paolo is approached by Garzone and agrees to hide a Jewish brother and sister, who are wanted Partisans. This decision turns out to be life changing.
Very descriptive, you feel like you are in the narrow streets of Venice. The story is very brutal at times and full of suspense, I liked the ending, there is an interesting twist towards the end.

I finished this book so quickly as I couldn't put it down. I was drawn in by the story Nonno Paolo was telling his grandson and it has stayed with me ever since I finished reading it. It was beautifully written.
The twist in the book shocked me, I did not see that coming!
I don't think enough words will do this book justice, you just need to read it. Heartbreakingly beautiful.

This was a fine book exquisitely written and well plotted that ranged between the present and the past and provided a beautiful and detailed picture of occupied Venice in the second world war. Original and heartbreaking at times, this was an excellent read.

I really enjoyed this book, well written with a riveting storyline and well developed characters. I loved the mystery and suspense elements, I loved the dual timeline and historical elements. I loved it.