GENTE SIMPATICA: Appealing People

A pleasant book, pure story, and an appealing set of characters with everyday virtues and shortcomings. A painter in Venice of the present day determines to pick up the threads of the past and locate a woman whom he had really loved and who had borne his child, now a grown woman. But he is sidetracked from his personal affaires de coeur by a young girl who attempts suicide in the house where he is living --and he, and an artist friend, decide to set her on her feet again -- teaching her to paint -- and eventually pulling her through. On the eiderdown side -- a likeable book.