Sunday, June 28, 2020

The Bishop's Bedroom / by Piero Chiara ; translated from the Italian by Jill Foulston.

The Bishop's Bedroom, was a short but interesting book.

We meet a young sailor as disembarks from his sailboat at the dock.  An older gentleman is waiting on the pier for him and strikes up a conversation, inviting the young man for drinks.  They find out that they have both returned from war and are at loose ends trying to get their lives back in order.

The young man has been sailing up and down the lake visiting woman along the way before he decides to get a job and settle down.  The older man invites him to his home up the hill where he lives with his wife and beautiful widowed sister-in-law.  The young man is intrigued with the tranquility of the lake side mansion and gets caught up in the mysteries that surround the owners and their servants.

As a friendship seems to develop the two men take to sailing expeditions around the lake.  When they are at the house, the young man sleeps int he bishop's room, a relative of the wife.  Things start to become more mysterious as a tragedy strikes and the young man begins to realize how little he really knows about his hosts.

This is a physiological thriller with exquisite taste, a study of desire, greed and deception.

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