The work was inspired by a month-long holiday to the Italian Riviera, probably the most widely read (as an English and American best seller in 1923 1]) and perhaps the lightest and most ebullient of her novels. The Enchanted April is a 1922 novel by British writer Elizabeth von Arnim. Everything in their lives changes and nothing changes. Who can stay unhappy with all the glorious sunshine, blue sea, and fragrant gardens? Italy’s enchantment works its magic. Eventually four unhappy women go to the house in bella Italy. Although they do not know one another well, Lottie approaches Rose and the two dream of Italy. As she prepares to leave, Lottie sees Rose Arbuthnot reading the same ad. It starts her dreaming, she thinks if only she could have this little time away, one month, to be on her own and free then she could endure trying to be a better wife, to do things just right. She sees an ad on a house in Italy for the month of April. Lottie stopped at her women’s club to read the paper on her shopping rounds. But Lottie doesn’t fit well into such a strict and narrow life she cannot seem to do things right. He is all stiff upper lip British wanting things done just so and hoping his wife will be an asset to his business. Lottie Wilkens is a young wife married to a lawyer. Colour seemed flung down anyhow, anywhere every sort of colour piled up in heaps, pouring along in rivers.The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim is one of my favorite books. And beneath these trees were groups of blue and purple irises, and bushes of lavender, and grey, sharp cactuses, and the grass was thick with dandelions and daisies, and right down at the bottom was the sea. The cherry-trees and peach-trees were in blossom-lovely showers of white and deep rose-colour among the trembling delicacy of the olives the fig-leaves were just big enough to smell of figs, the vine-buds were only beginning to show. The ground behind these flaming things dropped away in terraces to the sea, each terrace a little orchard, where among the olives grew vines on trellises, and fig-trees, and peach-trees, and cherry-trees. The wistaria was tumbling over itself in its excess of life, its prodigality of flowering and where the pergola ended the sun blazed on scarlet geraniums, bushes of them, and nasturtiums in great heaps, and marigolds so brilliant that they seemed to be burning, and red and pink snapdragons, all outdoing each other in bright, fierce colour. “All down the stone steps on either side were periwinkles in full flower, and she could now see what it was that had caught at her the night before and brushed, wet and scented, across her face.

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