Waking Raphael, by Leslie Forbes

[GabrielleRay]

Hello, fellow book-readers.

I would like to shout for Waking Raphael, by Leslie Forbes. It's about an English art restorer (Charlotte) in Italy, in a town with a dark secret. It's a charming book, full of warmth and characters: a count attempting to restore the past, a loud American television presenter, sinister mafia-types, an old mute woman who damages Charlotte's painting and knows things that would be better kept silent, a wolf that stalks through the story.

I'm not doing it justice here: it is worth a read. It's well written, and weaves a charming (that word again) world around you. The Italian-ness of it may lean slightly too much towards the usual Italian image, but from the point of view of the non-Italian reader, this is not much of an issue.