On a spring day earlier this year, I stride with Dalla Ragione into the National Gallery of Umbria, in a 14th-century stone castle built atop the hillside city of Perugia. Umbria, a region in central Italy next to Tuscany, is known more for its lush green spaces, hillside cities and Etruscan and Roman ruins than for its art. But the painters of Renaissance Italy traveled between regions, and some of the works on display in Perugia are as awe-inspiring as those in Florence. We breeze through room after room, passing a blur of masterworks by the likes of Gentile da Fabriano and Benozzo Gozzoli, until Dalla Ragione stops before a radiant painting that fills an entire room of its own.
The arresting work is by Piero della Francesca, an artistic giant of the 15th century. It shows the Madonna, wrapped in a deep blue robe, cradling a towheaded baby Jesus. But Dalla Ragione points me to what looks like a small bunch of translucent marbles in Jesus’s tiny hand: cherries! They’re pale red with a white tint—acquaiola cherries, a variety that has almost disappeared in Italy but back then was quite common. Their juice was seen as symbolic of Christ’s blood. The vaulted ceiling, the spiritual imagery, the murmurs and footfalls of other museumgoers give the scene a sacred feeling.
But perhaps this year the reluctance to plant bulbs lies a little deeper than mere idleness. We are outgrowing our home, and soon we will have to find a new one. I have been aware of this for long enough to think about the garden in terms of how many seasons I will be able to bear witness to it, to have a cup of tea or do some gardening in it. Was the past summer our last one in the garden? Will we have another yet? So much of what I have planted is only just getting going: increasingly I think about the garden as something I have made that is only partially formed; that I will never be able to see it achieve its full beauty.
Genre fiction and YA both get passed over (too) frequently for not being “serious.” I want to really urge folks who veer away from either to try Such Lovely Skin. Schlote-Bonne understands plot structure, character building and emotional stakes. Her prose is exacting, evocative, honest. Schlote-Bonne wrote a book about a haunted video game that manages to be funny and real and moving. I can’t imagine dismissing this book.
For all his love of occluded words, this assured debut gives readers reason to hope Carter will continue unoccluding his own.