Tenor of Love

I enjoyed reading this novel. It was a little depressing to see how the women were portrayed (by a women novelist no less), but I think her goal was to present the impact Caruso had on the women who loved him. The prose was lovely and description didn't overpower the story which is sometimes the case when novelists wax poetic about Italy. I picked up the book because I was intrigued about Caruso having heard my mother rave about him when I was a child. His name is still legend despite all the wonderful opera superstars that have followed.

This is not a book about opera, per se, nor is it about the career of Enrico Caruso. It is a sad story of unrequited love, betrayal, and finally love found and lost again because of an untimely death. Mary Di Michele's talents as a poet are evident on every page; her story brims with vivid description, simile and metaphor. The only other author whose descriptive powers can compare is Diana Gabaldon. Although not a fan of poetry myself, I loved the way Ms. Di Michele brought turn-of-the-century Italy and New York City just before the Roaring Twenties to life. Her research, of her settings and of the characters who are based on real-life people, is meticulous and serves to draw the reader confidently into the times and places the characters lived and breathed. Nothing irritates me more than a romance novel whose inauthenticity insults the reader's intelligence. This is NOT a romance novel, yet neither is it biography. "Tenor of Love" is a fact-based novel filled with romance, and highly sensuous without the graphic sexual scenes that contribute nothing to a story. You will spend hours smelling gourmet Italian cuisine, fragrant spring and summmer flowers, men's cologne, slept-in bed linens, and cigarettes. You will feel what these women feel, in loving a man both in life and death. Despite its tragic nature, you feel yourself willingly becoming a part of it. If you want a book that can draw you into another world, cause you to hope and despair along with its characters, and leave you wishing there could be more scenes to lose yourself in, "Tenor of Love" is a book I highly recommend.

Tenor of Love reads like poetry. Mary Di Michele's novel grabbed me on page one and I couldn't put it down until I finished it. Section one brings the reader into the Italy of Enrico Caruso's early career. You can see the sunlight and smell the flowers.Section two takes an equally adept journey to New York, and into the mind of Caruso's American bride. Fine storytelling, lyrical narrative voices, a sheer joy to read.