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There's just something about Italy that Americans can't get enough of. I don't know what that something is, but I hope to someday understand. I know it's something more profound than just the sheer number of friendly cats and dogs roaming the streets (though I did strike up a friendship with a horse in Rome because I fed him an apple every day), but I think I'm okay with living in the world of speculation for now. It's the mystery for me that's the most tantalizing part. 

Because of this, I'm happy reading lots and lots of books where Americans go on vacation to Italy, only to end up having a hellish experience. That's part of why I love reading horror books set in unique locations. I get to experience another place without actually putting myself in danger (I'm allergic to gluten) and/or dropping thousands of dollars. And to be clear, I'm not interested purely in versimilitude with spooky travel fiction. I could simply read a nonfiction book about places I would want to visit for that. Rather, I'm curious to see how different writers characterize the places they set their stories in. What makes their vision of Tuscany, or any other place, different from others'? How does it expand our notion of a particular region or city?

Diavola by Jennifer Thorne is a vacation horror story that blurs the line between nightmare and fantasy

With that in mind, I am pleased to present Diavola by Jennifer Thorne to you. It follows a woman named Anna, who joins her family at a property they rented in a village outside of Florence. While this might sound like anything other than the premise of a horror story, for Anna, it certainly isn't. Her judgmental and insecure sister, Nicole, has brought her two daughters and boring husband, while Anna's twin brother, Benny, has brought his pretentious new boyfriend, Christopher (not Chris), to meet the family for the first time. Anna's father would rather be reading a James Patterson novel, while her mother can't help but stoke the flames of conflict between her two daughters. For Anna, this vacation is something to be endured, rather than enjoyed. 

If you've ever thought your family vacation was dysfunctional, rest assured that it probably didn't go as badly as the one in Diavola. I guess there are some pretty horrific Airbnbs out there, but the villa that Anna and her family stay in is nightmare fuel. Nicole's kids leave their cereal bowls out on the kitchen table all day, and when the family returns, they discover that the milk inside the bowls has curdled, and handfuls of maggots are wriggling in their contents. In the words of Randy Jackson, "it's a 'no' from me, dog." 

As Anna discovers, the house they're staying in is haunted by the ghost of a woman from the Renaissance. And, of course, the villa's reputation is well-known, but only if you're a local. These are all familiar gothic haunted house tropes, but under writer Jennifer Thorne's eye, she breathes a contemporary sense of believability into them. Anna feels like an actual person, dealing with the actual whims of her family. And her having to endure the supernatural happenings in her strange new environment on top of the odious behavior of her brother's boyfriend, in particular, grounds the events of the story within a sense of emotional realism. If fending off a ghost with hair the color of yellow Gatorade (ew) wasn't already scary enough, imagine doing that while also staying in the same house as a stingy wine snob. Personally, I would lose my mind. 

"No wonder the windows were all closed. They'd sensed the Americans coming." 

Diavola is built within a tradition of horror where our enjoyment comes out of seeing the protagonist eschew all niceties in order to call out all the bullshit that they've spent the entire story enraged by. Other examples of this include movies like Fresh, Us, Carrie, Jennifer's Body, and Ready or Not. And it isn't surprising, then, to see the commonalities between all of these stories: they're led by women. There's a catharsis that we experience when the protagonist finally gets the chance to unravel and yell something like, "Could you back the fuck off for two seconds? I am monologuing!" like Anna does in Diavola. 

There's a certain level of fantasy within this catharsis that ties back into the vacation fantasy that Diavola kicks off with. I think most of us want to travel the world, eat good food, and have a good time. But we also want to strike back when we're reminded of how little control we have over our own lives. When the going gets tough, we want to say, "Could you back the fuck off for two seconds? I am monologuing!" and have someone listen. It is this part that feels more unattainable than a picture-perfect Italian vacation, at least for Americans right now. Perhaps my fascination with horror books about Americans visiting Italy stems from a desire to encounter supernatural, almost operatic adversaries in a beautiful part of the world over the ugly, domestic bullshit of being an American today. 

So this summer, I'm feeling lucky that I get along with my immediate family, and I suppose on another level, I'm also grateful that my home isn't haunted. Because Diavola makes the case for why feuding with a Renaissance lady with Gatorade hair in Tuscany could be pretty fun (I mean, the drama of it all). Feuding with an American ghost just isn't the same, because I already live here, and I guess it can get worse than it already is. 

Just like yourself, the Popverse staff spends a whole lot of time with our respective noses in respective books. It's why we've come up with stuff like:

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