Innocence A Novel

The Ridolfi are a Florentine family of long lineage, eccentric habits, and little money. Like their villa, the Ricordanza, the old Count and his sister are also a little decrepit. Not so Chiara, the Count's only child. At eighteen, she is beautiful -- convent-schooled and guileless, in love with the temperamentally explosive Salvatore. He is a brilliant but penniless doctor from the south, a young man in flight from his father's unswerving devotion to lost leftist causes. Salvatore is determined to avoid all politics and any affair of the heart. Stymied, Chiara calls on her seemingly more worldly schoolfriend, Barney. Arriving from England, Barney is a veritable firestorm of energy, wreaking havoc everywhere. Salvatore finds her "monstrous"; Cesare, Chiara's silent, enigmantic cousin, finds her... well, admirable; and Giancarlo, the old Count, finds her formidable. He flees his beloved Florence for Rome. An effervescent comedy of manners and misunderstandings, Innocence follows the affairs of these slightly off-center characters as, with the best of intentions, considerable charm, and the kindest of instincts, they manage to make each other thoroughly and astonishingly miserable.