The Evening of the Holiday

Hazzard’s first novel, barely a hundred and thirty pages, set over a summer in Tuscany. Sophie, half-Italian and visiting her aunt, meets Tancredi, who is older, separated and not free. The affair is conducted almost entirely in conversation, and it is doomed in a way both of them see from the start. Hazzard writes sentences other novelists keep on the desk to remind themselves what is possible.