I was sent this book from @anansibookshop as the first book I got from my annual subscription. It's a play! And it is the wildest one I’ve ever heard of. Take a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, and cross it with a social drama. In real life, the play is held in a manor, and you can leave the scenes as characters do, and follow them into different scenes in other rooms. That chauffeur seems a little suspicious? Follow him as he leaves the scene to the servants stairway where he confides with a maid what he’s really up to. Want to know what the maid does with that information? Follow her to the oratory where she confides in the lady of the house. Then take that concept and overlay it with the setting of the manor of a political prisoner of Mussolini and a famous polish art deco artist he’s trying to sleep with/get painted by. Up to 9 scenes can be happening concurrently! I’m TOTALLY in LOVE with this book (thank you Basil from Anansi, I am forever in your favour for sending this to me).

There are, therefore, a few different ways to read the book. You can play god and read all the concurrent scenes so you can see everything that happens in the whole manor to everybody. How I read it is how it is intended to be seen: I followed the characters that seemed most interesting to me, alternating between an Italian composer and a former concert pianist as they seemed like they’d be dramatic (I wasn’t wrong). But the aforementioned chauffeur is noted as “suspicious” right in the play notes, and I didn’t even get to following Gabriele D'Annunzio, “Italy's narcissistic cultural hero”, or Tamara de lempika herself. Those will have to come in another reading.

I probably read fewer than half the scenes the first time through, but I kept notes, so the next time I read through I can find different scenes, and learn hopefully more about the very dramatic ending, which I read knowing I missed something very important while I was off somewhere else in the manor. If you love theatre, and want something incredibly unique, read this book!