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REVIEW
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"Engaging thriller"
Middle age art restorer Charlotte Penton travels to
Urbino, Italy to work on a fabulous project, restoring a
faded Raphael painting, La Muta, The Silent Woman. The
renovation assignment is difficult as Charlotte must first
peel away the previous "repairs" to get to the basic
masterpiece. Then she applies skill, experience and
guesswork to mend the painting. Following Charlotte to Urbino is youthful Canadian media
star Donna Ricco, who is the pretty girl frontal visage
for an arts restoration program. Donna quickly finds the
tedious meticulous work boring, but knows she must bear it
if she is to get ahead in her career. When a mute woman
defames the masterpiece, the two visitors see it
differently. Charlotte is appalled but wants to learn why
while a gleeful Donna sees a terrific story. As the two
North Americans combine resources to learn the truth, they
will open up secrets from the war and much more about
grandmasters that the town's elderly want left hidden. This engaging tale hooks the reader from the moment that
the mute woman desecrates La Muta because the mystery
within a mystery is embedded in an incredible background
tidal wave of art, history, legends with a hint of the
paranormal, local politics, and religion. The lead duo is
dynamic opposites except both have energy that will make a
marathon runner feel like a couch potato. Fans of crime
thrillers with an edge will want to read WAKING RAPHAEL
and obtain Leslie Forbes' previous tales, BOMBAY ICE and
FISH, BLOOD AND BONE as this reviewer plans to do. Harriet Klausner
Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted May 31, 2004
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| SUMMARY |
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A gripping thriller set in Urbino, Raphael's birthplace,
Waking Raphael is the story of a restoration - of a
painting and of a community. An investigation into a nearly-
forgotten war crime is sparked off when Muta, an enigmatic
mute woman, stabs a Count, in the process damaging
Raphael's painting 'La Muta' which has just been restored.
When rumours begin to circulate about Muta the woman - that
she lives in the rotting fortress, San Rocco, on the
outskirts of town; that she has a secret grudge against the
Count; that something terrible happened to her during the
war - more and more people begin to worry that the truth
will come out. There are many other 'mutes' in this small
town - Francesco, the ice-cream maker who knows that to
reveal his secret would be to commit suicide, Charlotte,
who is incapable of expressing love, Donna, a Canadian TV
presenter who 'can't shut up to save her life', but cannot
speak Italian. The story is told as a series of miracles,
the biggest and last, the truth finally being revealed
about what happened at San Rocco during the war. Mirroring
the reawakening of a national conscience in Italy in 1993,
Leslie Forbes intelligently and passionately evokes the
stories of each mute and Urbino's second renaissance is
brought about. Beautifully-drawn characters, a wonderful
sense of time and place and an omniscient narrator bring an
incredible warmth to this third novel from the author whose
first, Bombay Ice, was a Sunday Times bestseller.
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