The Enchanted April

Elizabeth von Arnim’s warm, gently comic novel from 1922 opens with a newspaper advertisement offering a small medieval castle on the Italian Riviera to let for the month of April. Two unhappy, unacquainted Englishwomen, worn down by dull marriages and a grey London spring, answer it together and take on two more companions to share the cost: a beautiful young aristocrat tired of being admired, and a stiff elderly widow living among her memories. Away from their ordinary lives, amid wisteria and sunshine, each woman slowly softens and rediscovers what she wants. The castle works a quiet transformation on all four, and on the men who eventually follow them there. This free PDF and EPUB edition offers the complete novel.