Today I am pleased to welcome Kathryn Kay, author of The Gilder, to Great Thoughts’ Great Authors. This is another fabulous book partially set in Italy. I thoroughly enjoyed it and think you’ll enjoy this guest post as well.
Here’s Kathryn:
My arrival in Florence, Italy in 1975 at the age of twenty-two was not dissimilar to Marina Nesmith’s arrival in Florence in the opening pages of The Gilder.
Her plan of arriving in the safety of daylight had gone awry when she boarded the wrong train in Milan and instead of arriving in Florence had ended up in a tiny station somewhere on the coast. Her dream—of speeding through flat fields dotted with whitewashed farm houses and cypress trees, of turreted towers and terra cotta roofs in the distance, the red dome of the cathedral rising from their midst—had been reduced to a black nightscape dotted with blurred pinpoints of light. – The Gilder
Unlike Marina, I did not arrive in Florence in the dead of night but in the early evening, though the tears Marina struggles with upon her arrival were not unlike the tears I shed in a tiny seaside station when I realized I was lost. I’d been coming from Amsterdam and had changed trains in Milan, and was happily settled in my compartment admiring the glittering Adriatic flash by when the conductor called for our tickets and upon seeing mine informed me in words I didn’t understand but with gestures that conveyed their dreadful meaning that I was on the wrong train, headed in the wrong direction. I was put out at the next station and recall watching the train disappear into a tunnel leaving me alone on the platform with only a sense of panic and my grubby, oversized backpack for company. In the end, with the help of a kindly stationmaster, I did finally make my way to Florence, fell under its spell, and stayed for five years.
Just as arriving in a place for the first time is an experience that can never be repeated, each subsequent return to that place is equally unique. During the years I lived in Florence I experienced my homecoming many times: from the States where I visited every summer to spend time my father in Pennsylvania, from England where my mother and sisters lived, from various points in Italy and Europe when I went exploring, and, once, from Persia after a trip to meet my boyfriend’s family. Inevitably, the last leg of the return trip was by train, and I can still feel the cool surface of the train window as I pressed my cheek against it waiting for that first glimpse of the massive Brunelleschi dome that signified the end of a journey and the comforts of home (such that my sparse student apartment offered). These returns to Florence were unique, each in their own way; I had ventured out into the world and was returning with refreshed eyes, but the shifts were subtle. A more dramatic shift came when, like Marina, I returned to Florence after a long absence and experienced a homecoming that was as deeply confounding as it was enlightening.
When Marina returns to Florence as a mature, successful career woman fifteen years after fleeing the city in shame, she struggles to reconcile herself with the city in which she once lived as a poor student.
How odd it felt to stay in a luxury hotel, somehow disloyal to the simple student she’d once been. Hadn’t she walked past pricey restaurants and hotels like this, and looked disdainfully at the tourists, the invaders of her city? But the fourth floor hallway with its thick carpet and flocked wallpaper was a welcome relief from the world outside, where the past and present converged in a maelstrom of sensations that left her wrung out. – The Gilder
My departure from Florence after five years did not resemble Marina’s hurried and unhappy exit in any way, it was simply an organic unfolding of my life, and as a middle-aged newlywed, I was looking forward to showing my new husband the city I cherished and was not prepared for the feeling of disorientation that greeted me. As with Marina, it wasn’t that Florence had changed—it was that I had. Life had changed my viewpoint and circumstance. I had grown up and was no longer a struggling student of restoration wondering what to do with my life. Now I was staying in a beautiful hotel and dining in fine restaurants, and I felt like an imposter, unable to find a point of connection with the city I had known and loved so well; the sense of displacement was devastating. It wasn’t until the third day of our visit, when my husband suggested renting bikes that I was finally able to reconnect as we cycled through the streets and neighborhoods as I once had years before.
Sometimes we return to a place and expect it to be the same as it once was. However, this would require that we ourselves had remained the same. Florence changed a younger Marina and it changed a younger me. When Marina returns it takes her some time and some false steps to discover her next steps and to find resolution in the city she ran from. I love to travel and to visit new places, but I find that returning somewhere familiar, and unlocking the secret of its new place in my life, can be the richer and more rewarding experience.
About Kathryn Kay
As a young woman, Kathryn Kay spent five years living in Florence, Italy, where she studied restoration and gilding. She returned to the States when her daughter was born, and later pursued a MFA in writing at Vermont College. Kathryn is the founder of the Nantucket Writers Studio, which offers writing workshops for women. She has three adult children, and lives on Nantucket Island with her husband.
Kensington Books provided a review copy of this book. All opinions are my own.
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