Lovely Apple Gidley always seems to have a new book out just when I’m in the middle of some personal crisis and can’t manage to fit in reading and reviewing for her. So it is with Finding Serenissma! However, I’m delighted to welcome Apple to Linda’s Book Bag with a guest post to celebrate today’s publication of Finding Serenissima.
Apple has previously featured here on the blog and I’m delighted to welcome her back with a super post considering those of us not in the first flush of youth. Before that, though, let’s find out about Finding Serenissima.
Published today 11th March 2025 by Vine Leaves Press, Finding Serenissima is available for purchase in all the usual places including directly from the publisher here.
Finding Serenissima
With the help of a feisty hotel owner, an attractive water-taxi driver, and a gondola full of Italians who call Venice home, Amelia, a widowed Australian, begins her search for serenity. As the island city works its magic, she comes to realize her life has been overshadowed by her famous American husband, Leo, well before his decline into Alzheimer’s.
As Amelia navigates Venice’s winding canals and its language, she gracefully confronts the joys and challenges of aging, discovering that love and laughter can come at any stage of life. Balancing long-distance parenting and familial obligations, she redefines what it means to live fully as an older woman, all while the magical city slowly helps her reclaim her identity.
Finding Serenissima is a heartwarming tale of second chances, exploring the complexities of long marriage, independence, and rediscovering love in the most unexpected places.
Fiction for Over Fifty
A Guest Post by Apple Gidley
Who cares about fiction representing more mature women as the leading lady? Perhaps a good proportion of the eleven or so million women aged over 55 might, and that’s just in the UK. Too often older women feel invisible, sidetracked, bypassed and, based on a survey by BookBrowse, that would appear to be a mistake. Of more than 3,600 people questioned, the average age of women in book clubs is over 45, that’s a lot of readers who shouldn’t be dismissed or forgotten.
No wonder, then, the huge success of novelists like Elizabeth Strout and her 2008 book, Olive Kitteridge; or Rachel Joyce’s Miss Benson’s Beetle. Both depict strong mature women. Women want books that speak to the real universal issues they might face, like in Kate Morton’s The Secret Keeper; or Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir, Eat, Pray, Love.
Conflict resolution is something many have learned from childhood. Watch a little girl telling teddy not to lord it over rabbit. Or a teenager giving comfort to a friend’s heartbreak. The trials become greater at university—perhaps a lecherous tutor, or amorous jock—then workplace inequities as men are promoted over female colleagues, and sometimes above their abilities.
As we ladies-of-a-certain-age continue to age, we want to read of others who have overcome whatever has tried to stop us in our tracks. Not just those who have made it to the top of their chosen tree, but about strong women leading ordinary lives who don’t always get the recognition they deserve. How satisfying lives can be led without children; or how each stage of children’s lives are juggled and navigated. Perhaps how any, or all, of the three ‘d’s—divorce, dementia, death—are managed, and how clambering out of the hole that sense of abandonment has opened can lead not only to survival but adjustment and, as the pain eases, gives access to maybe a different, yet still fulfilling life.
Amelia Paignton, in Finding Serenissima, is such a woman.…
Exhaustion prickled Amelia like scalding water as she stood under the shower and washed off the travel grime. Wrapping a towel around her chest, she stepped over to the window and looked out at the people sauntering along the canal. Snatches of Italian drifted up, adding to her disorientation, her sense of displacement. Untethered.
“Well, that’s what you wanted.” Her words jarred loud in the calm of the room. “But Italy? You don’t speak the language. You don’t know anyone.” She could almost hear the words coming from Leo’s mouth, see the petulant tilt of his lips.
She shook her head, and clutching the towel, replied. “No, Leo, I don’t, but I can learn. And Leo, who was it that had to make a life for us while you painted? I can do this.” The threat of tears dispersed as anger replaced rootlessness. Swapping the towel for a sarong, she lay down on the bed. Sleep. That would help. But not too long.
The ping of the phone alarm woke Amelia and, prizing her eyes open, it took her a moment to remember her surroundings.
“Oh, my God, I’m in Italy!” Laughter followed her pronouncement. Shadows playing a different dance to earlier in the day told her hours had passed. And the grumble in her tummy. She had to go out. Take the plunge. And her dictionary.
Pulling on a pair of jeans,she tucked a green shirt into the waistband, then stuck her feet into ankle boots. A slash of eyeliner and mascara, a jacket and scarf, and she felt ready.
“I can do this.” She repeated her new mantra.
This desire for strong female protagonists, of any age, can extend to non fiction. We want to learn of women who have led remarkable lives. Women like, Elżbieta Zawacka, the Polish WWII resistance fighter whose life is documented in Clare Mulley’s latest book, Agent Zo. Or Bloody Brilliant Women by Cathy Newman, described as “a fresh, opinionated history of all the brilliant women you should have learned about in school but didn’t.”
As a teenager, the travels of Mary Kingsley and Dervla Murphy enthralled me. I was lucky, I was already seeing the world, but their words made me want to see more and, sometimes, I’d wish I had been born into an earlier time, so I could join them in their adventures. Although I doubt I’d have had the courage to pack my bags and go, certainly not solo, as did Gertrude Bell who mapped, physically and metaphysically, the Middle East. She was far better described as the Queen of the Desert rather than, as some suggested, the female equivalent of Lawrence of Arabia.
When I read, I want characters, real and imagined, to inspire me. Characters like Janet Pimm, the seventy-year old, in Helen Paris’s The Invisible Women’s Club to remind me that 50, 60, 70, 80 are all just a numbers—particularly on the days when I glance in a mirror and wonder who is that older woman looking out at me.
When I write, strong women slip onto the pages. Not consciously created. They just appear. Perhaps, somewhere in my subconscious, I want my granddaughters, when they are old enough to read my books, to recognise their own potential, their strength, even when things don’t go according to plan. Or my grandson to respect the line of strong women on both sides of his family.
And sometimes it is a reminder that women need women. Rather as Amelia, in Finding Serenissima, comes to rely, both for friendship and guidance, on the older determined hotelier, whose words will not be brooked and who says with regal bearing, “I am Bria Valentina Scutari”.
We want to read about them. Those friendships that transcend age, distance, and occasionally, the men in their lives! Who would argue that eleven million women are wrong?
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Certainly not me Apple! Thanks so much for this fabulous guest post – and for representing those of us who still feel we have a place in the world!
About Apple Gidley
Apple Gidley has lived all over the world. Her roles have been varied – editor, intercultural trainer for multinational corporations, British Honorary Consul to Equatorial Guinea, amongst others. She started writing in 2010.
You can find out more about Apple on her website and by finding her on Facebook or following her on Instagram and Twitter/X @ExpatApple.
