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Miss Wells

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first registered 27.12.09

last online 18 hours ago

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Hard Boiled Wonderland and the end of the world.
The Venus Fixers
Keeping Watch
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Paint

Violet Wells

“Today's target is Florence.”


Freddie St Aubyn pilots a Lancaster bomber. Today he will have to drop his load of bombs on the city where his wife lives.

His wife Isabella is an Italian portrait painter. She paints from nature, she paints what she sees.

Oskar Joos studied at the same art school as Isabella. He is a German Jew. Living in Paris when war broke out. He escaped the 1942 roundup of Jews and has arrived in Italy with his young daughter.


Florence between September 1943 and August 1944 is a city in the thrall of the secret police. A city where most are in hiding, masked behind fake identity papers; where it is dangerous to trust anyone with the truth, where no one is allowed to know what the truth is.


Isabella continues to paint. Continues to pursue the truth of her vision. Until she is called upon to forge an old master painting for a high ranking SS officer. Pontormo's image of St Anthony, patron saint of lost things.

Freddie, Isabella and Oskar will all end up in the hands of the secret police. Will all be barked at to relinquish their truths, the truth of who they are.

 

Ponte Santa Trinita

Violet Wells

The temptation to betray a secret is always there, always exhaling its hot intimate breath in your ear.


Mario Carità was the most sadistic of the SS torturers in Florence during the second world war. It was his job to extract secrets.

On the death of her father Zinnia St Aubyn finds a journal. The journal is written by an English sculptor living in Florence who has fallen in love with an Italian dancer and so refuses to leave Italy at the outbreak of war in 1940. He is soon forced to assume a false identity to avoid capture by the fascist authorities. He becomes Jewish, because Jews in Italy were forbidden to join the armed forces but were otherwise left relatively in peace. Until the Nazis arrived in 1943.


The journal will lead Zinnia back to Florence and into the web of her own closely guarded secret.

PST is about the relationship between secrets and identity – how we both gain and lose identity in relation to the secrets we protect or disclose. And it’s about the narrative bridges in life, the butterfly effect over time of one rash decision or moment of hesitation. .

 

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latest

Zijn wrote 22 hours ago

“It was two kids against the world. And the world didn’t stand a chan....

grantdavid wrote 1 day ago

Hallo again, Violet. It's all become so painful that I've updated my ....

katemb wrote 1 day ago

Well, they've clearly got no taste! Thank heavens you've got all thos....

katemb wrote 1 day ago

Hi Violet. Gutted to see Paint go out of Mayhem! But isn't it ref 2 ....

Fire Your Imagination wrote 3 days ago

I love your interpretation of events. You have really captured the ti....

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my comments

latest

I wrote 3 days ago

Early morning clarity and sparkle to your prose which I admired more and more as I read on. You've created your world with vibrant knowledge which gives all the descriptions a pulse, a distinctive ripple of colour. Fabulous characterisation too. Stella's concerns quickly became mine. There were many... view book

I wrote 21 days ago

The atmosphere of Sigma is a fascinating juxtaposition of the primeval and the digital. The virtual world is where all the excitement and fate is to be found; the physical world by contrast seems a kind of shanty town of coarse imprecations and humdrum transitions. In other words, it’s a fabulous co... view book

I wrote 33 days ago

Fabulous writing with a constant compelling crackle of verve and vitality to it. It's both menacing and tender, cynical and wide eyed. Especially loved the devil in my wheelchair chapter. Great. I loved this. view book

I wrote 33 days ago

I like edie feeling like a cat in a basket. That's a great metaphor for the helplessness that war brings with it and though her complaint against the deprivations is still little more than an aesthetic irritation we get the feeling of ripples beginning that will alter her deep down in her nature. Ed... view book

I wrote 53 days ago

The hallmark of all good writing is an effortless quality, like a moving current. And yours certainly has that. There's always an imaginative vitality about your word choices, a little thrill of recognition that you've nailed the image. Never a lazy sentence and the eloquence always achieved with ad... view book

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