The Italian

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The Italian is a story of two young people who conceive a deep and abiding love for each other on the strength of a very brief acquaintance, largely consisting of longing for each other from afar after a brief initial meeting and subsequently spending a few boating trips together, chaperoned by suitably respectable relatives.

The boy is from a noble and proud family; the girl, apparently, is from far more humble stock. His parents, hearing scandalous rumours about goings-on between the two, forbid the union. The boy's mother goes a step further and, prompted by her Confessor, an ambitious and sinister monk, has the girl kidnapped and sent to a convent. The boy tracks his girlfriend down and they escape, only to be captured again...

The Italian is a fast-paced read, with a lot happening in the first few chapters: love at first sight, warnings in the night, a family in turmoil, a kidnapping, a death, and mysterious characters lurking about. Not to mention quick travels through the Italian landscape.

This is a complexly plotted Romance about two chaste and naive teens who fall madly in love with each other at first glance but then have their parade rained on by the boy's mean-spirited mother and her minion, Schedoni, the conniving and ghoulish monk who chomps apart every scene he skulks through.

Schedoni steals the show, as really masterful villains sometimes do. He's the most deceitful, deceiving, cynical, least favorable character, but at the same time the most complex.

Schedoni is "the Italian" referenced in the title...