Love and Rain by Carmella Circelli

A review by:

Carmella Circelli’s debut novel, Love and Rain, is an atmospheric tour-de-force that mixes the politics of love, the sexuality of rebellion, the psychology of history and the emotions of the intellect until they bleed into each other like colours of a painting abandoned in a torrential downpour.

The story starts in present-day Toronto where we meet, Chiara a sexually liberated woman in her late thirties with commitment issues. When her most recent relationship break-up becomes messier than usual, she finds the thing – an indefinable emotional darkness – has entered her life. Her well-meaning analyst can’t help her and neither can her parents. It is Paolo, the gay owner of the flower shop where she works (and to whom she is strangely attracted) who offers her a key when he gives her letters from his past to read.

The story’s locale then moves to Montreal of the 1970s, narrated by Francesca, a woman in her twenties who hangs out with her politically aware cousins. It is the time when the demand for an independent Quebec and the rise of the FLQ stir these young Italian-Canadian firebrands’ hearts and opinions. We are also introduced to Francesca’s sister, Micola, a shy young woman who is more interested in music than politics. Her own talent as a singer gives her some hope for her future, but she and Francesca are too much under the thumb of their tyrannical father and subservient mother. When tragedy strikes the family, the story moves to Italy, at first to their windy ancestral village in the south and later to Rome, where Francesca becomes involved with the terrorist group the Red Brigade.

Much happens until, at last, the story comes full circle back to Toronto, where Chiara discovers truths about herself and the thing that has been plaguing her life. The truth threatens to tear her apart emotionally and psychologically, but the possibility for redemption unexpectedly enters the picture, testing Chiara’s inner strength to face a past she never knew existed.

“Circelli’s background as an adjunct philosophy professor at York University and as a practicing psychotherapist has obviously served her well in creating Love and Rain.”

Circelli’s background as an adjunct philosophy professor at York University and as a practicing psychotherapist has obviously served her well in creating Love and Rain. But it is her facility with language, often poetic and sensual, that lifts this narrative. The ease with which she shifts from the political to the philosophical to the psychological to the poetic distinguishes this debut.

“The truth is that the ideologically constructed world I let myself submit to was a purely male world, even if there were women who were a part of it. It was a world seen from the sterile lens of pure abstraction, inflexibly applied without concern for life or living. Purity of purpose, power and rage, that was all that counted. At the time, this suited me, because I too felt only rage and because I was trying to escape being haunted by the past.

But this is what I want now. I want my words to smell and taste of earth, with rivers and currents running through them, with sun and rain, intermittently, pouring out of them, with the dead, whispering in them.”

I also felt that Circelli’s use of multiple narrators in the novel’s sections heightened the mystery and added a richness of different voices, for which she has a keen ear. A liberal dose of cultural name-dropping such as Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, and others, gives the novel a bohemian tone which, I believe, most readers will find appealing. If you have ever imagined yourself sitting in a rented room overlooking rue Ste-Catherine while Songs of Love and Hate plays on a scratchy phonograph, then this is the novel you want to have in your hands as you pour yourself another glass of Chianti.

Carmela Circelli was born in Southern Italy and grew up in Montreal. She has been teaching on contract for the Philosophy Department at York University for 30 years, and also works as a psychotherapist in private practice in Toronto. In 2014, Quattro Books published her philosophical memoir Sweet Nothing: An Elemental case for Taking out Time. Love and Rain is her first novel.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Guernica Editions (Sept. 1 2023)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1771838132
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1771838139

Steven Mayoff

StevenMayoff(he/him) was born inMontreal and moved to Prince Edward Island, Canada in 2001. His books include the story collection Fatted Calf Blues (Turnstone Press, 2009), the novel Our Lady of Steerage (Bunim &Bannigan, 2015), the poetry chapbook Leonard’s Flat (Grey Borders Books, 2018) and the poetry collection Swinging Between Water and Stone (Guernica Editions, 2019) and the novelThe Island Gospel According to Samson Grief(Radiant Press, 2023). As a lyricist, he has collaborated with composer Ted Dykstra onDion a Rock Opera,which will receive its world premiere at the Coal Mine Theatre in Toronto in February 2024.