Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Marie Arendt
Categories
Historical adventure fiction

EVERY TIME WE SAY GOODBYE

Natalie Jenner

In 1950s Rome, a group of British and American expatriates (including Vivien Lowry from Bloomsbury Girls) become embroiled in controversy while making a movie about a female Italian resistance fighter during the occupation codenamed La Scolaretta: the Schoolgirl assassin...

A surprise phone call from her late fiancé's family sends Vivien Lowry of Bloomsbury Girls off on her next adventure. Struggling as a playwright, she moves to Italy both to reckon with her past and create a new future as a script-writer at the Cinecittà studios in Rome. Here she encounters the greatest male bastion of them all, the Vatican, and ends up entangled between the church and the censors while romantically caught between two men: an enigmatic American film financier who is not who he says he is, and a socialist Italian prince and independent filmmaker under house arrest over a censored screenplay. Jenner brings to life a large and intriguing cast, each of whom has a wartime experience from their past that they must revisit in order to move on - Vivien most of all. With surprise appearances by characters from Jenner's first two books, The Jane Austen Society and Bloomsbury Girls, and cameos by screen legends such as Sophia Loren, Ava Gardner, and Gina Lollobrigida, Every Time We Say Goodbye captures both la dolce vita and the haunting legacy of war. Natalie Jenner was born in England, raised in Canada, and graduated from the University of Toronto with consecutive degrees in English Literature and Law. She worked for decades in the legal industry and also founded the independent bookstore Archetype Books in Oakville, Ontario, where she lives with her family and two rescue dogs.

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Book Published 2024-05-14 by St. Martin’s Press

Comments

I'm in awe of Natalie Jenner's new novel, which surprised me at every turn... a heartbreaking, engrossing, and thoroughly dazzling work of art...

Brave and searing, with characters that stay with you long after the final page, Every Time We Say Goodbye is Natalie Jenner at her brilliant best. A beautiful, transporting novel about buried truths, creative resistance, and hope's persistence in the wake of war and heartbreak - this is one not to be missed.

UK: Allison & Busby ; Finland: Minerva ; Ukraine: Knigolove

...Every once in a while, a story comes along that really grips you and inspires you to contemplate the choices we're all given, and Jenner has done that here. An absolute page-turner, I couldn't put this captivating book down.

Compelling and fascinating! Every Time We Say Goodbye has the magic of a time traveler that enables the reader to live the very rich and complex lives of its characters. Like Lisetta who risks her life fighting for a better world, Natalie Jenner has dedicated her life to employing the power of literature to make this world a better place. I can't wait for the day when this book is published!

I was completely transported to Italy of the 1940s and 50s in Every Time We Say Goodbye. Natalie Jenner has written a wonderful novel full of charm, wit, and style, that also manages to plunge us into the torments and triumphs of love, war, and moviemaking.

Jenner provides an insightful view into Italy's postwar reckoning, and she imbues the novel's many celebrity cameosincluding actresses Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigidawith authentic flair. Jenner's fans will love this.

With passion and prowess, Natalie Jenner captures la dolce vita of mid-century Rome in this stylish novel of romance, conspiracy, and movie-making. This intricately textured novel showcases Jenner's exceptional talent, exploring the relentless cost of war, the unpredictable dangers of loyalty, and the many ways love can offer solace during our darkest hours. Every Time We Say Goodbye is the kind of historical fiction that transports readers into the past while being remarkably relevant to the world we live in today.

...stunning... Jenner triumphs once again ... Only a writer with Jenner's talent could weave religion, art, loss, and romance with such empathy and skill.

What a glorious, sweeping novel - an amazing accomplishment. Cinematic in scope, Every Time We Say Goodbye is a bittersweet reminder of the reverberations of war, as well as an ode to cinema as an art form that preserves history, reflects the best and worst of humanity, and helps us heal. Ultimately, this moving story embraces individuals' ability to thrive after tragedy, and urges us always to strive for la dolce vita. Brava!

They say movies are magic, but what Natalie Jenner does - giving us the movie-making business in Rome in the 1950s - is truly divine. Her research on post-World War II Italy is meticulous, her story is layered, and you'll be rooting for her characters long after you've turned the last page.

In a city once made dark by occupation, a group of idealists and dreamers attempt to find light in the artifice and glitter of the Italian cinema - but when confronted by those who have a vested interest in perpetuating lies about the war, they find that the shadows of conflict are not so easily banished. Natalie Jenner's latest novel cements her status as a master storyteller, her complex characters and meticulous research bringing to life a story of redemption, love, and living up to the choices we make.

A star-studded romp set in Rome that is at once a love story and a reflection on war. Every Time We Say Goodbye shows how we seek to make connections, no matter the cost, and how writers continue to create in the face of censorship. Quite simply Jenner's best.

Natalie Jenner is at her historical fiction best with Every Time We Say Goodbye. This propulsive page-turner set in 1950s Rome, where American and British expats are making a controversial movie about a female Italian resistance fighter during WWII, has all the juicy elements readers will devour: art, passion, love, loss, history, and sacrifice. Jenner leaves no stone unturned in this well-researched and richly textured novel filled with iconic cameos - Hello, Sofia Loren, Peggy Guggenheim, and Gina Lollobrigida - to name-drop a few. This spectacular tale will not only transport you to another time and place, but also make you sad to say your own goodbyes when it's over. Brava!

Every Time We Say Goodbye is a marvel, a tale rooted in history yet filled with the twists and turns of a thriller. Jenner has a gift for transporting the reader - not only to Italy but to the shaky, horrific, and, ultimately, hopeful ground of the 1950s. Destined to join the canon of evocative WWII fiction, this novel is not to be missed.