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Book Club Kit: The Girl From Venice by Siobhan Daiko

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Please be aware going into this post that it is for people who have read the book and therefore contains some spoilers.

About the book

Publisher: Asolando Books

Genre: Historical fiction, World War II

Number of pages: 310 pages

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8506469889

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B093SRRM5D

Published: June 29, 2021

Purchasing links: Amazon - Barnes and Noble

Goodreads

Trigger Warnings: Death, Miscarriage, PTSD, Rape

Book Covers

Book Synopsis

Lidia De Angelis has kept a low profile since Mussolini's racial laws wrenched her from her childhood sweetheart. But when the Germans occupy Venice in 1943, she must flee the city to save her life.

Lidia joins the partisans in the Venetian mountains, where she meets David, an English soldier fighting for the same cause. As she grows closer to him, harsh Nazi reprisals and Lidia’s own ardent anti-fascist activities threaten to tear them apart.

Decades later in London, while sorting through her grandmother’s belongings after her death, Charlotte discovers a Jewish prayer book, unopened letters written in Italian, and a fading photograph of a group of young people in front of the Doge’s Palace.

Intrigued by her grandmother’s refusal to talk about her life in Italy before and during the war, Charlotte travels to Venice in search of her roots. There, she learns not only the devastating truth about her grandmother’s past, but also some surprising truths about herself.

A heart-breaking page-turner, based on actual events in Italy during World War II

About the Author

Siobhan Daiko, Author of The Girl From Venice

Siobhan Daiko is an international bestselling historical romantic fiction author. A lover of all things Italian, she lives in the Veneto region of northern Italy with her husband, a Havanese dog and two rescued cats. After a life of romance and adventure in Hong Kong, Australia and the UK, Siobhan now spends her time writing and living her best life near Venice. You can find her on Facebook: Asolando Books, Twitter: @siobhandaiko

Authors website

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 Review of The Girl From Venice by Siobhan Daiko

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

The Coffee Pot Book Club Book of the Year Award- Gold Medal 2021

Discussion Questions

How do you think Charlotte's story helped tell the story of what happened to Lidia? Did it add to the story as a whole?

Why do you think Lidia never told anyone, including family, about her life in Italy?

Did you learn anything new about World War II from reading this book that you weren't aware of previously?

Lidia's father decided not to leave Venice. Would you have stayed like he did or would you have left to build a new life like Renzo and his family?

Do you think you could travel to Italy (or another country) on your own like Charlotte did?

How do you think reading books about past wars can help us in the future?

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.’