An enchanted April
by Elizabeth von Arnim
A new translation of Elizabeth von Arnim’s funniest and most popular novel arrives
It all started with the announcement of a castle in Italy. Rose and Lotty, two housewives who have sacrificed their dreams for indifferent husbands, decide to rent the property and spend the month of April by the sea, a challenge to the conventions of their routine and unhappy marriages. To help pay the expenses, they look for two other companions, Lady Caroline, a young aristocrat tired of social life, and Mrs. Fisher, a prissy and prissy widow who in her youth knew all the great men of Victorian literature. The four women, who did not know each other, change the rainy and gloomy London for the sunny Italian gardens, but the change they will experience during their coexistence will be much more important than a vacation and will mark their lives in a lasting way, to let in new happiness and hope.
Published in 1922, An Enchanted April was a great success in England and North America and Elizabeth von Arnim’s best-known novel, thanks to her sense of humor and her insight into the portrait of the female soul. In 1935 Harry Beaumont adapted it to film, and in 1991 Mike Newell did so, with Josie Lawrence, Miranda Richardson, Polly Walker, Joan Plowright and Alfred Molina in their main roles.
Elizabeth von Arnim (1866-1941) was in her time an extremely popular writer, whose relationships included Katherine Mansfield, whose cousin she was, Hugh Walpole, EM Forster, Bertrand Russell and HG Wells, with whom she had an intense romance. She lived in Australia, Germany, Switzerland, England and the United States. She is the author of twenty books, several of them adapted to theater and film, her best-known novels are Elizabeth and Her German Garden, The Lonely Summer, Enchanted April and Mr. Skeffington.
Source: https://algunoslibrosbuenos.com/un-abril-encantado
