FOR THE LOVE OF VENICE

Percy, 17, is spending the summer in Venice with his engineer father, his artist mother, and his endearing brother, Christopher, 6. Percy misses the sailing and soccer he left behind in Massachusetts until he meets Graziella, who sells him gelato and offers him other things to think about. Napoli (Stones in Water, 1997, etc.) expertly weaves a number of strands: the Venetians’ love and loathing for the tourists who keep the city alive; the delicate and ever-threatened ecological balance of the lagoon; the darkness of violence planned with the purest of motives. The city’s radiance is captured in small, stunning moments: fireworks over the water on a festival night; a dark alley doorway that opens into a palace with cherubs on the ceiling; the taste of new olive oil. A wild summer storm and two small boys lost in it, the suggestion of a first sexual encounter, and the odd exhilaration of new places and experiences drive the story, even as Percy tries to find his place as an American in Graziella’s deeply Venetian life. All the while, Napoli never lets the message about the city’s fragile existence overwhelm the story or the delicacy of the romance. (Fiction. 12-15)