Italian villa is the scene of creativity and anguish in two centuries | DON NOBLE

Rachel Hawkins has had two recent successes with novels that are, in some fashion, based on previous novels. “The Wife Upstairs,” set in Mountain Brook, was a clever retelling of “Jane Eyre.” “Reckless Girls,” set on a Pacific island, followed the action of Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None.”

Perhaps this is a good time to say there is nothing wrong with retelling an old story. It is an old and honorable practice. William Shakespeare made extensive use of "Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland," 1577, in writing his history plays and elements of “Macbeth” and “King Lear.”

In the later 1960s and early '70s it became fashionable to talk about what John Barth called "The Literature of Exhaustion." We discussed whether all the possible characters and plots had been used.

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Foolish old man falls for young girl. Adulterous husband slays wife, etc. etc. Siblings engage in sibling rivalry. Young person "comes of age." The only hope was to use the old pieces in new combinations. Barth himself published "Chimera" (1972), a trilogy of retellings, the most successful of which was "Dunyazadiad," in which Scheherazade's younger sister tells of watching and listening to her sister tell her stories to Shahryar, the king, for 1001 Arabian nights.

Barth was a huge fan of and advocate for the Argentinian writer Jorge Louis Borges who wrote the story which should have ended all storytelling, "The Library of Babel,” in which Borges imagined a library of infinite size, housing "every possible combination of alphabetical characters and spaces, and thus every possible book and statement, including your and my refutations and vindications.”

Publicity material for “The Villa” suggests that it’s inspired by the story of the writing of “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley in 1816, in a villa in Switzerland, perhaps on a bet, and by the Manson murders and by ’70s rock 'n' roll.

There are echoes and allusions, but, unlike some of Hawkins' earlier work, this is not exactly a retelling. “The Villa” is in the tradition of the story within a story, the “lost” manuscript discovered and responded to.

(Perhaps the best example is A. S. Byatt’s “Possession.”)

Two young women, Emily and Chess, friends from childhood in Asheville, North Carolina, spend the summer of 2021 together in Italy in a rented villa, the Aestas.

In that same villa, in 1974, two stepsisters, Mari and Lara, both 19 years old, lived with Mari’s lover Pierce, an up-and-coming musician, and Noel Gordon, the world’s most famous rock star, and his live-in drug dealer, Johnnie. (Noel, with his limp, is modelled after Lord Byron, and Pierce after Shelley. Mari is Mary.)

In the 1974 sequence, there are sexual hi-jinks, drugs, rock and roll, betrayal, and violence.

And writing. Is the villa in some way magic? A lot of creative work was inspired there. Or cursed. The villa was a scene of human misery and pain. Do houses have memory? Do humans sometimes get tuned in to what the house is "thinking"?

The 2021 characters are very much aware of the 1974 events. Chess was hoping for a spark from the villa. Nobody seems to be thinking about the Shelleys and Byron. These are silent parallels.

Nevertheless, based on the events of that summer, Lara will write and record a brilliant album, named Aestas, compared here to Carole King’s “Tapestry,” and Mari, who finds a piece of hidden manuscript, will write a spectacular novel, “Lilith Rising.”

Emily and Chess are writers; at present, both are blocked.

Chess writes self-help books for women. Her titles include “Your Best Self” and “You Got This.” Her career began as an advice column on a website, then Instagram, then a Ted Talk, then Oprah’s couch. She advises women on how to get on “The Powered Path.”

It was difficult for me to decide whether Hawkins meant the reader to find Chess’s books ridiculous or not.

In any case, I do.

And sometimes Emily does, too. She writes: “Chess launched herself as this weird combination of Taylor Swift, Glennon Doyle and a girl boss Jesus.”

Emily has produced nine “Petal Bloom” cozy mysteries with titles like “A Deadly Dig” and “A Murderous Mishap.” At present, however, life has turned bleak. Her toddler son died and her estranged husband, Matt, is suing for a big chunk of Emily’s royalties and future earnings.

All the men in all centuries are unreliable, even treacherous egomaniacs. It is necessary for male readers and reviewers to keep in mind that men are not the intended audience for these novels. Women are.

But Chess is sketchy too. She will betray Emily in a variety of ways that should be unforgiveable, but apparently aren’t, and the two will create a masterwork together, based partly on what they learn about the 1974 shenanigans, which may have included murder. Or, perhaps not.

This novel is as contemporary as can be. The 2021 characters follow one another on social media and Emily knows she can post, on Facebook and Instagram, lovely pictures of herself in Italy, looking happy, that might dismay the wretched Matt. As elements in the larger narrative, there are emails, quotes from Lara’s song lyrics, and such meta-elements as literary and musical criticism of the characters’ works.

Hawkins’ fans love her plots with their twists and turns.

“The Villa” may have one too many turns. It made me dizzy.

Don Noble’s newest book is Alabama Noir, a collection of original stories by Winston Groom, Ace Atkins, Carolyn Haines, Brad Watson, and eleven other Alabama authors.

“The Villa: A Novel”

Author: Rachel Hawkins

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Pages: 288

Price: $28.99 (Hardcover)

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Italian villa is the scene of creativity and anguish in two centuries | DON NOBLE