New novel ‘Finding Serenissima’ by Apple Gidley explores second chances in a new country

Finding Serenissima is the latest novel from Ickleton-based author, Apple Gidley, who held an official launch party for it last Saturday (15 March) at Ickleton Social Club.

Described as “a novel of hope and second chances after dementia”, the subsequent death of her husband also threatens to swamp the main protagonist, Amelia.

Where better to heal – and take stock – than in Venice? And that is where the book, Apple’s sixth, is set.

“It’s a story of second chances,” says Apple, who at one time or another has been a magazine editor, intercultural trainer, and British Honorary Consul in Equatorial Guinea, among other things.

“An older woman is the main protagonist, which honestly these days is not that common.

“You’ve got Miss Benson’s Beetle, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert – and then of course you’ve got Deborah Moggach and her The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel...

“So in this one she is a widow, her husband suffered from dementia for 10 years, and he eventually dies, not of dementia but from cancer.

“Her children are grown and gone – one lives in New York and one lives in Sydney – and she decides she needs to start again.

“So she wants to go somewhere where she’s never been with her husband, not because she doesn’t want memories of him, but because she feels it’s time that she did something for herself.

“The more she actually thinks about it, the more she realises that a lot of her life has been consumed by his.

“He was a successful American artist, and her life was catering to him. He was a philanderer. Can there be a good philanderer? He still deeply loves his family…

“And so she deals with all this; she moves to Italy where she knows no-one, she doesn’t speak the language, and it’s terrifying!

“Starting afresh anywhere is terrifying, and that is something I know, not as a widow but I’ve moved many times and lived in many countries, and it’s kind of scary.

“So she does that, and with the help of local Venetians who befriend her, she finds her way, and finds that actually life can go on.”

Born in London, Apple left the UK a month after her birth when she and her Australian mother joined her British father in Nigeria.

“Apart from 18 months as a very young woman working in London, I’d never lived in England,” says Apple, who moved to Ickleton with her West Country-born husband, after a life spent living abroad – most recently in Saint Croix in the US Virgin Islands – 18 months ago.

“Neither of us believes in going back somewhere, so we decided to try somewhere completely new and so we landed in Ickleton, which has been fantastic.”

Is Venice a city Apple knows well? “I do know it reasonably well,” she says. “And with the use of maps and timetables, and all sorts of information that you garner when you travel there, you do the research, because if you don’t get it right, someone will always tell you.

“Someone will always come in and say, ‘That shop isn’t there’ or ‘You can’t get there from there on that water taxi’. So you have to do your research properly.”

Apple, who has also lived in Papua New Guinea, The Netherlands, Trinidad and Tobago and Malaysia, among other places, concludes: “I think people will finish reading it and even though there are parts that are terribly sad, I think it is an uplifting book, I think it’s a hopeful book.

“I hope it gives the impression that life is rubbish sometimes, but you’ve just got to keep going and you will find a way through it.”

Finding Serenissima was published on 11 March and is available now. Visit applegidley.com.