The Italian Party
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Edoardo Ballerini
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By:
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Christina Lynch
About this listen
The Italian Party by Christina Lynch is a delicious and sharply funny audiobook about “innocent” Americans abroad in 1950s Siena.
Newly married, Scottie and Michael are seduced by Tuscany's famous beauty. But the secrets they are keeping from each other force them beneath the splendid surface to a more complex view of ltaly, America, and each other.
When Scottie’s Italian teacher - a teenager with secrets of his own - disappears, her search for him leads her to discover other, darker truths about herself, her husband, and her country. Michael’s dedication to saving the world from communism crumbles as he begins to see that he is a pawn in a much different game. Driven apart by lies, Michael and Scottie must find their way through a maze of history, memory, hate, and love to a new kind of complicated truth.
Half glamorous fun, half an examination of America's role in the world, and filled with sun-dappled pasta lunches, prosecco, charming spies, and horse racing, The Italian Party is a smart pleasure to listen to.
©2018 Christina Lynch (P)2018 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Tremendous fun! Wives with big secrets, husbands with bigger ones, swirling around a 1950s Siena teeming with seduction and spycraft." (Chris Pavone, New York Times best-selling author of The Travelers and The Expats)
"The story plays like a confectionery Hollywood romance with some deeper notes reminiscent of John le Carré and Henry James. Scottie is a resilient main character who might have been played by Grace Kelly or Audrey Hepburn in a 1950s movie adaptation of this entertainingly subversive take on that seemingly innocent period." (Publishers Weekly)
“Set in Siena in 1956, this debut novel is a spy thriller, comedy of manners, and valentine to Italy, spiked with forbidden sex and political skulduggery [...] The ending is unexpected, with the author displaying a sophisticated, nuanced view of love and marriage that feels very modern. Or maybe it's just Italian.” (Kirkus Reviews)
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- A Novel
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- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin, Maria Elena Infantino
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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England, 1967. Odelle Bastien is a Caribbean émigré trying to make her way in London. When she starts working at the prestigious Skelton Institute of Art, she discovers a painting rumored to be the work of Isaac Robles, a young artist of immense talent and vision whose mysterious death has confounded the art world for decades. The excitement over the painting is matched by the intrigue around the conflicting stories of its discovery.
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Mixed narration
- By Amy Fleury on 08-05-16
By: Jessie Burton
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Grand Central
- Original Stories of Postwar Love and Reunion
- By: Melanie Benjamin, Amanda Hodgkinson, Pam Jenoff, and others
- Narrated by: Carla Mercer-Meyer
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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On any particular day, thousands upon thousands of people pass through New York City's Grand Central Terminal, through the whispering gallery, beneath the ceiling of stars, and past the information booth and its beckoning four-faced clock, to whatever destination is calling them. It is a place where people come to say hello and good-bye. And each person has a story to tell.
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Grand Central: Memories
- By ZacharyKindle Customer on 05-03-17
By: Melanie Benjamin, and others
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The Tea Rose
- By: Jennifer Donnelly
- Narrated by: Jill Tanner
- Length: 28 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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East London, 1888 - a city apart. A place of shadow and light where thieves, whores, and dreamers mingle, where children play in the cobbled streets by day and a killer stalks at night, where bright hopes meet the darkest truths. Here, by the whispering waters of the Thames, Fiona Finnegan, a worker in a tea factory, hopes to own a shop one day, together with her lifelong love, Joe Bristow, a costermonger's son. With nothing but their faith in each other to spur them on, Fiona and Joe struggle, save, and sacrifice to achieve their dreams.
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Wow. Wow wow wow!
- By I like to shop on 04-26-16
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One of Those Malibu Nights
- By: Elizabeth Adler
- Narrated by: Julie Briskman
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Mac Reilly is a P.I. with a penchant for lost causes. One night in Malibu, he comes to the rescue of a distraught woman holding a gun in the doorway of a fabulous beach house. When the woman disappears and the gun shows up in his car, Mac is pulled into a web of deception and lies.
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DNF
- By NightRunner on 08-14-21
By: Elizabeth Adler
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Our Story Begins
- New and Selected Stories
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Wolff here returns with fresh revelations - about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary. A retired Marine enrolls in college while her son trains for Iraq. A lawyer takes a difficult deposition. An American in Rome indulges the Gypsy who's picked his pocket.
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Great
- By chris on 04-11-08
By: Tobias Wolff
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Mr. Fox
- A Novel
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Carol Boyd
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently....
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A Great Novel, just Poor for Audio
- By James A. Dittes on 08-13-16
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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Wild Lavender
- By: Belinda Alexandra
- Narrated by: Kate Hood
- Length: 20 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Simone Fleurier is wrenched from her home on a Provencal lavender farm at the age of 14 after the accidental death of her father. Forced to become a maid at the boarding house of her Aunt Augustine in Marseilles, Simone's life is hard and impoverished. But one of her aunt's boarders, the beautiful Camille Casal, a star at the local music hall, gives Simone a dream: that one day she too will be a famous singer and dancer.
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An Extrodinary Story
- By Wade on 08-16-08
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Hum If You Don't Know the Words
- By: Bianca Marais
- Narrated by: Katharine Lee McEwan, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 14 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a 10-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. Both lives have been built upon the division of race, and their meeting should never have occurred...until the Soweto Uprising.
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Completely wrong accents
- By Debbie on 02-12-22
By: Bianca Marais
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Here on Earth
- By: Alice Hoffman
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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March Murray, along with her 15-year-old daughter, Gwen, returns to the small Massachusetts town where she grew up to attend the funeral of Judith Dale, the beloved housekeeper who raised her. After nearly 20 years of living in California, March is thrust into the world of her past.
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The magical realm of Alice Hoffman
- By Brendolynne on 07-09-12
By: Alice Hoffman
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One Amazing Thing
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Purva Bedi, Soneela Nankani, Neil Shah
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of a Pushcart Prize for poetry and an American Book Award for her short stories, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores themes of women, immigration, and her vibrant Indian culture to great effect. Divakaruni expands on these ideas in One Amazing Thing, a project long in the making and full of electric prose.
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An ok way to kill some time
- By R.Reader on 11-07-12
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The Women in the Castle
- By: Jessica Shattuck
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined - an affecting, shocking, and ultimately redemptive novel from the author of the New York Times notable book The Hazards of Good Breeding.
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Skating On The Thin Ice Of Life
- By Sara on 04-29-17
By: Jessica Shattuck
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The Girl in the Blue Beret
- A Novel
- By: Bobbie Ann Mason
- Narrated by: Fred Sullivan
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Inspired by a true story, the best-selling author of In Country offers a gorgeous, haunting novel about an airline pilot coming to terms with his past, and searching for the people who saved him during World War II. After Marshall Stone's B-17 bomber was shot down in occupied Europe in 1944, people in the French Resistance helped him escape to safety.
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Needs a woman narrator for female characters
- By Patricia A Gallagher on 02-23-21
By: Bobbie Ann Mason
What listeners say about The Italian Party
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Kindle Customer
- 04-23-18
Have to suspend belief
Would you consider the audio edition of The Italian Party to be better than the print version?
Did not read so can't tell. The reader was very good.
Would you recommend The Italian Party to your friends? Why or why not?
I saw the author and she is very engaging. On that basis I bought the Audiobook. It was not good enough on its own for a recommendation. That said, it is a great beach read for this summer.
Which scene was your favorite?
The seduction.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
Neither laugh or cry. But so many sub plots made it sort of silly. One or two of the twists would have done and then delve into the culture or characters a bit more.
Any additional comments?
THe tone of the 50s is spot on.
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- Becky Menke
- 01-11-23
Open minded and truthful Scottie
My favorite was Scottie and her openness to admit her own failures to then accept others no matter the pain. She was an inspiration for many reasons.
Story line was good and enjoyed history of Siena, government warfare, etc.
Balanced in the story line.
Look forward to reading more of her books!
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- ClemTiger80
- 09-29-24
A look at gray areas of some values, norms, and behavior (with great food)
I loved everything about this book. The Sienna setting, Italian food, and 1956 fashion was enough but the storyline captured my attention and I sped through it. The characters were complex. Books that cause you to reflect on accepted norms are good for your brain and soul. Narrator was excellent.
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1 person found this helpful
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- RueRue
- 10-06-18
Cold War intrigue
The start of the story had style, humor, and intrigue, but unfortunately that didn't carry through the rest of the book. The emphasis seemed to be on the covert operations of the CIA in Italy to halt the spread of Communism in the late 1950's. Just not my kind of intrigue. Great narration, though.
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- Treetop
- 06-10-18
engrossing and delicious
loved the characters, especially Scottie. wanted to go eat Italian often while enjoying the book.
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- Jen
- 12-27-22
Charming book
I typically love darker books, but I was charmed by this story. I am having trouble putting into words why I liked it so much, but it was a mix of realness and lightness that is just right.
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- Savvy in Santa Monica
- 07-31-18
Narrator Comfortable with Italian
Lots of insider information about Sienna in this lively tale. Unwinding of the characters’ secrets was particularly compelling. As one who often cringes about mispronunciation, this was a good reader comfortable with a story with multiple points of view.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 05-01-18
Best book I've read in a long time!
The Italian Party has a great and snappy dialogue, a fast-moving story and vibrant characters in a book packed with humor, intrigue, history and wonderfully large doses of Italian culture and landscapes. I was sad when I finished it! Great read for anyone who loves mysteries and thrillers, love stories, history and travel.
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- Gina Nello
- 05-04-22
Loved everything about it!
The story, the style, the narration…. Perfecto! A little bit of everything including a glimpse into post war Italy.
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- Margaret
- 07-28-18
Beautiful people, beautiful Tuscany . . . secrets
A lovely summer read, with more depth than you imagine in the beginning.
Michael and Scottie, handsome newlyweds, set off across the sun-dappled Atlantic to start their new life adventure in Siena, Italy. Lynch spends the first half of the novel peeling back the onion layers of secrets and lies the two of them have witheld from each other, at the same time the gender roles and entitlement of the 1950's U.S. is sanding down Scottie and Michael. By the time everything is out in the open, Michael and Scottie have only their character and integrity left to build a new life - will they make decent choices?
This intriguing plot is set against a backdrop of sleepy post-war Italian village life, communist activism and gorgeous Tuscan settings - with a lurking undercurrent of ex-pat decadance and cold-war paranoia.
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2 people found this helpful