It's 1954 on Verona Island, a tropical paradise with a fragile economy. Prostitution is legal and Lila Gulliver is proud of her high-end brothel. When Carità Bercy, a destitute and beautiful blind woman, arrives at her door seeking employment, Lila decides to give her a chance. When Ian Drohan, the scion of the wealthiest family on the island, visits Lila's house and falls madly in love with Carità, Lila doubts his sincerity and fears for Carità's future. But Carità is a reckless force of nature, determined to succeed in ways Lila hasn't even contemplated.
If you linger too long over the prose, the novel’s female characters start to sound a tad more 2024 than 1954, especially as there’s little in the way of period-specific detail. Luckily, the narrative bounds along at an entertaining clip ... Most maddening... is Martin’s reliance on reporting that action at a remove, via descriptive dialogue between characters after the event.
Like Shakespeare’s play, this dryly written, utterly brilliant novel considers love at first sight and the predicament of being female in what is always a man’s world.
