A to Z Challenge - Favourite Books - The Enchanted April

nchanted April, by Elizabeth von Arnim.

"Eager to escape the dreary February rains of 1920s London, four women agree to rent the small medieval castle of San Salvatore for a much-needed vacation on the Italian Riviera, and each in turn is seduced and changed by the special place."

Sounds like such a simple premise... I've just discovered that The Enchanted April is available on Gutenberg! No need for me to tell you any more about it, you can read the lovely sweet story for yourself.

I was in my teens when I first read this book, and I've stayed in love with it all these years all for this paragraph:

"Rose clasped her hands tight round her knees. How passionately she longed to be important to somebody again--not important on platforms, not important as an asset in an organization, but privately important, just to one other person, quite privately, nobody else to know or notice. It didn't seem much to ask in a world so crowded with people, just to have one of them, only one out of all the millions, to oneself. Somebody who needed one, who thought of one, who was eager to come to one--oh, oh how dreadfully one wanted to be precious!

All the morning she sat beneath the pine-tree by the sea. Nobody came near her. The great hours passed slowly; they seemed enormous. But she wouldn't go up before lunch, she would give the telegram time to arrive..."

Actually, I think that this quote is the reason I love to write romance.