Book Club Kit: The Girl From Venice by Siobhan Daiko
About the book
Book Covers
Book Synopsis
About the Author
Author Interviews
The Girl from Venice is a story I’ve wanted to write for years. The family next door to our old place hid a Jewish couple during the war, and, in nearby Bassano del Grappa, there are trees bearing memorials where young partisans were hung by the Nazi-Fascists in September 1944. I needed to do a lot of research before I could sit down and write The Girl from Venice, a daunting task, but I finally got round to doing it and I hope readers will like the story that emerged. Read the full interview by @MagicofWorldsBE
Book Reviews
My knowledge of the Italian Resistance was that it existed but that was all. The Girl From Venice enriched my knowledge in a way that was not an info dump. Read the full review by @Berry_Train
The Venetian setting of this novel sets it apart from much of the WWII fiction focused on Germany, Poland, and Austria, and will appeal to readers with a particular interest in the time period. Read the full review by Susan the Librarian
This book is so utterly riveting, I simply could not put it down. This is the sort of book that I could read again and again. Read the full review by Like a Thousand Lives
This book is incredibly gripping, and the writing has that certain spark that makes it next to impossible to put down. I didn’t want to stop reading, and I was disappointed when I had finished it and had no more pages left to read. This book should be on your to-read list. Read the full review by The Whispering Bookworm
There are scenes in this book that will have you wishing for a different outcome, and hoping that everything will end up alright. This book does not gloss over the horrors of war, nor the treatment many prisoners suffered, but this adds to the story. Read the full review by Candlelight Reading
This book was absolutely enthralling from beginning to end and I adored every second of reading it! Read the full review by Oh Look Another Book
Awards
Discussion Questions
Quotes from The Girl From Venice by Siobhan Daiko
‘Five more years to go. Seems like a lifetime…’ ‘For you, it does, because you are young. Five years, for me, will pass in a flash.’
‘All Jews have been expelled from the university,’ he said without preamble. She gasped. ‘What do you mean, “expelled from the university”?’ ‘I went to register, and they shoved a piece of paper at me. There’s been a Royal Decree excluding Jews from public office and higher education.’ Renzo’s deep baritone voice seemed to have gone up an octave. Lidia shook her head. ‘There must be a misunderstanding. They can’t do this to us.’ ‘We’re Jews and that’s a good enough reason for them.’
‘I don’t think it was that. The generational gap between parents and children was very different when I was growing up. It seems that everyone talks about everything nowadays. In those days, it was normal for adults to keep things from children. Many of us had parents who’d suffered horrible experiences in the war and they preferred to forget all about them.’
I’d read that there was a monument in the square with a list of the Venetian Jews who’d been deported to concentration camps from the city between 1943 and 1944. My skin tingled with nerves; I hoped I wouldn’t find Gran’s family’s name etched onto the memorial.
Obviously, those air raid sirens had been a distraction. People’s eyes had been on the sky and the noise had prevented them from hearing what was going on. Would they have done anything, though? She doubted it; they would have been too afraid—
It had been as if they were possessed by the Devil as well as by the Nazis. Evil incarnate. She shuddered. How could they have done what they did?
‘I think we should defend the summit to the last man, show the Germans that Italians know how to die,’ Rocco insisted. But Silvio, who’d been quiet up to that point, shook his head. ‘Wouldn’t it be better we show them we know how to live?’
Francesca gave my arm a squeeze. ‘Italians pitted against Italians. Germany pitted against the Allies. Young people fired up by the spirit of insurrection. It was a terrible time in Italy.’
‘And it’s happening again today in other parts of the world.’
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