Rachel Cusk's account of a summer spent in Italy with her husband and two small children, travelling through Tuscany, Umbria, Rome and the south in search of art, food and a sense of home. Structured around the paintings of Piero della Francesca, Giotto and Raphael, it mixes travel writing with reflections on family life, motherhood and the writer's own restlessness.
Books mentioned in The Last Supper (15)
Sea and Sardinia by D. H. Lawrence: Epigraph: 'Comes over one an absolute necessity to move...' D. H. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia (epigraph); later discussed as Lawrence's two-week visit to Sardinia
The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence: “'In The Rainbow Lawrence writes of the operation of culture as a form of grace in human evolution.'”
The Lives of the Artists by Giorgio Vasari: “'I have been reading Vasari's Lives of the Artists and have learned something of Piero's obscurity'”
The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal: “'it is how I imagine Fabrizio's tower to have been in Stendhal's Charterhouse of Parma'”
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri: “'Dante summed up the situation in the Divine Comedy: Once, Cimabue thought to hold the field In painting'”
The Cat in the Hat by Seuss: “'In the car they were reading The Cat in the Hat. They read it aloud'”
Hamlet by William Shakespeare: “'I read them Hamlet's soliloquies'; 'The children are playing Hamlet'”
Othello by William Shakespeare: “'They want to know the plot of Othello, of Antony and Cleopatra.'”
Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare: “'I read them ... Antony's love-speeches'; 'the plot of Othello, of Antony and Cleopatra'”
Macbeth by William Shakespeare: “'I read them Hamlet's soliloquies and Antony's love-speeches and Macbeth's unsettling remarks on the death of his wife.'”
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare: “'Instead I tell them the story of Twelfth Night.'”
Canticle of the Creatures by Francis of Assisi: “'he wrote the Canticle to the Creatures, a love poem to the unpopulated earth, to the sun and wind and water'”
The Sick Rose by William Blake: “'like the sick rose in Blake's poem'”
Extra Virgin by Annie Hawes: “'one or two paperbacks in the sitting room, with titles like Extra Virgin and Tuscany for Beginners'”
Tuscany for Beginners by Imogen Edwards-Jones: “'paperbacks in the sitting room, with titles like Extra Virgin and Tuscany for Beginners (Love and War in a Hot Climate!)'”