The main character is Luca Vianello, son working in his father's shop, an ancestry of gondola making family. However a tragic accident results in a fire burning down the business and Luca flees fearing the wrath of his father. The novel follows him as he struggles in a new life finally becoming the gondolier to an artist. He discovers an old gondola there and asks permission to restore it which he does in his hours while not working. Meantime in the gallery workshop of the the artist Trevisan, he notices a portrait in process by the artist of a beautiful; young woman and becomes obsessed with her. He learns she is Signorina Giuliana Zanchi and is smitten but knows she is far above him as a mere gondolier. Surprisingly she contacts him and asks that he meet her clandestinely. She asks for his help to take jewelry to a man at a party, she tells him he will know him, recognizable as a Jew immediately. Luca does this and gives her every cent of the money he gets in return. So begins the twist. Her family has fallen on hard times since her father's death and her mother will be entering a convent. She will either be married off to someone she does not chose or have to enter the convent herself. She is trying to sell some of the jewelry secretly to raise money without her mother knowing and gets Luca to take other pieces to pawnbrokers on her behalf which he does willingly. He dreams of taking her for a ride in the gondola he is restoring. The tale continues and one day after restoring the old gondola which was built long before by his grandfather he meets with her on the boat. But someone is watching and reports this to a mean Councillor in the town who had eyes on Giuliana to add to his conquests of maidens, one night stands. The Councilior has Luca arrested and thrown into prison where he is sure he will perish. He arranges to have the gondola burned. Luca feels he has been betrayed badly by Giuliana and cannot make sense of what happened. But one day he is released to an old friend from his neighborhood, the oar maker, Master Fumgalli is old and failing and had befriended Luca as a boy back home. Fumgalli wishes him to take over his oar making business. Luca receives a package from the Artist Tristan with oarlock from of the old gondola and searches the convent for Giuliiana but learns she is not there. The novel wraps up with his reuniting with his sister and brother but not with his father. As the novel concludes though, his father has cone to him and knocks on the door. The inevitable.
A moving tale although parts seemed slow to me about the details of gondolas...Nevertheless the book is worth reading. I give it almost 4 ****
It opens: "I chew on my lip while I wait to see my father's gondola catch fire. Beneath the boat a pile of firewood is stacked so high that I find myself in the oss position of looking up at the underside of its black hull. A meticulous servant or day laborer has split the logs and arranged them into neat stacks, then pressed dried brush into the spaces between the wood, with intention to start an impressive blaze. The gondola has been lashed to the largest logs of the pyre, yet it remains skewed at an angle. From my vantage point I cannot help but admire the craft's flowing lines, its elegant prow reaching to the sky as if to defy this injustice. My father had nothing to do with te crime committed in this boat of course. I feel certain that none of the onlookers has any idea that my father, our Republic's most renowned gondola maker and I, a young man barely worthy of note, crafted this gondola with our own hands. Surely no one has noticed our catanella, the maple leaf emblem we care into the prow of each gondola that emerges from the Vianello workshop."
Pg 15, "of course this gondola burning isn't the first public humiliation that I have witnessed on this very spot in my life but I am certain that it will be the most memorable. "
Pg. 285 conclusion" My father stands on the other side of the door now, lifting his right hand. On either side of this narrow barrier my father and I stand like reflected images. Our hands are the same large knuckles, flat, smooth nails, his skin more lined, mine smoother but worn now from labor. We are separated by the hardness of the oak planks, the hardness of life, the hardness in our hearts. We are mirror images none the less. I am so lost in my vision that when the knock comes, I doubt that it is real, but my heart which skips a beat confirms it. I open my eyes and take a deep breath. Gently I open the door."
