Diavola

A Novel

Jennifer Thorne

This surprising mashup of tingly ghost story and Italian travelogue explores horror on two fronts: legitimately unsettling supernatural experiences and simmering, seething dysfunctional family drama.

Every year, the Pace family takes a trip together. This year, it’s a 9-day vacation in a luxury rental villa in Tuscany: the 600-year-old Villa Taccola. It’s exactly what you’d want in an Italian vacation home. Warm brown stone with terra-cotta tiles on the roof, a Renaissance tower to add a little romance, and in the garden, a sparkling blue pool.

Our 30-something heroine Anna is an artist with complicated feelings about this holiday. On one hand: a villa outside the tiny town of Monteperso. She can practice speaking Italian and draw the beautiful things she sees around her. On the other hand: her family.

Her twin brother Benny, usually her only ally, is bringing his new boyfriend. Her sister, always annoying, will be accompanied by her two daughters and her bland husband. And then there’s dad, super checked-out, and mom, chilly and judgmental.

The first lines of the book tell you exactly what you need to know about Anna’s relationship with her family. ‘Anna kicked off the annual Pace family vacation with a lie. It was the only smart move, and she didn’t feel the least bit guilty about it.’

While everyone else is arriving on Friday, Anna has invented a client meeting that will keep her ‘busy’ until Saturday. What she really does, instead, is fly to Florence alone on Thursday to drink wine on her hotel balcony, stroll the sun-drenched streets, and visit the Uffizi Gallery. Molto bene.

On the Uber ride from the train station to the rented villa, we get the first tickle of something sinister. The mustachioed driver says to her, ‘You sure you want to go to Villa Taccola? I could take you… anywhere else.’

The family reunion around the backyard pool does nothing to alleviate the mood. Anna is greeted with air kisses — and her sister’s sharp comments make Anna’s childlessness seem like a luxury and a character flaw at the same time. Anna’s twin brother and the new boyfriend have absconded to Pisa for the day, leaving resentment in their wake. As Anna goes into the house to change into a bathing suit, she hears her mom say with ice in her voice, ‘This is so nice. Everybody together.’

Their dinner together that night is no better. The sister insists on cooking while radiating the air of the put-upon. The new boyfriend announces he’s keto and will not be breaking his carb fast, Italy be damned. They all give Anna a hard time for her perfect Italian pronunciation, as though her ability to speak Italian is somehow an insult to them. It’s all cringy and perfect and is replayed — same song, different tune — throughout the trip.

The family dynamics are the perfect bedrock for haunting that begins as just a prickle of apprehension. The caretaker has warned them not to enter the villa’s tower, despite giving them the ornate key to its door. One night, Anna hears rustling outside and discovers men from the village pouring a perimeter of salt around the house. She has ghostly visions she convinces herself are merely dreams.

Then it escalates. Doors slam. Furniture re-arranges itself. The bookshelves are emptied, the books stacked in neat piles on the floor. Wine bottles smash on the kitchen tile.

Jennifer Thorne is a fantastic writer, and you will fervently hope she didn’t come by her deep understanding of messed-up families through personal experience. The words she puts in the mouths of her characters are pitch perfect — as are the lyrical descriptions of the Italian scenery: the countryside, the village restaurant, a winery, the weather. Here, enjoy a nice side of travelogue while I scare the pants off you. She makes the ephemeral hauntings feel tangible, even when the characters are experiencing things that rationally cannot happen.

This is a propulsive ghost story, and a love letter to everyone who’s survived being the black sheep/scapegoat of their family. If you enjoy a shiver up the back of your neck and are here for harrowing family drama, you will love this book.

Anna loved the dreamlike feeling of being somewhere new, striding forward into the unfamiliar. It was pleasantly unsettling. Pleasant to her, anyway — she suspected it was that same feeling that made Americans get louder abroad. Her family, for example. They were covering over their disorientation with the familiar — their own language, their own voices. Anna preferred to stay quiet, to revel in the strangeness, to get knocked off-kilter and stay that way. How else could you really absorb the aesthetics, art, environment, culture, the vibrant truth of a place? Especially a place like this. — Jennifer Thorne

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