The Chapel

"Combines art, art history, and Italian allure into a cerebral romance . . . vividly entertaining." --Publishers Weekly The tour Elizabeth Berman is on is better suited to her late husband, a Dante scholar who'd masterminded the itinerary as a surprise for their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary before leaving her a widow. Now she is in Italy alone, though she was itching to leave as soon as she arrived in Padua. Her efforts to book a ticket home, though, are stymied by her aggressively supportive children and the ministrations of an incomprehensibly Italian hotel staff. Then, in the Arena Chapel, she comes face to face with the first documented painting of a teardrop in human history--and in the presence of that tearful mother, and the arresting company of the renowned and anonymous women painted by Giotto, she wakes up to the possibility that she is not lost . . . "At last, a love story for adults--wrapped in a sophisticated mystery about art, religion and the fragility of the human heart." --Elizabeth Benedict, bestselling author of Almost

About the Author :
Michael Downing's novels include the national bestseller "Perfect Agreement," named one of the 10 Best Books of the year by Amazon and "Newsday," and "Breakfast with Scot," a comedy about two gay men who inadvertently become parents. An American Library Association honor book, "Breakfast with Scot" was adapted as a movie that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. His nonfiction includes "Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center," hailed by the "New York Review of Books" as a "dramatic and insightful" narrative history of the first Buddhist monastery outside of Asia, and by the "Los Angeles Times" as "a highly readable book." His essays and reviews appear in the "New York Times," "Washington Post," "Wall Street Journal," and other periodicals. Michael teaches creative writing at Tufts University. He and his partner have lived together in Cambridge for more than 25 years.

Review :
Praise for "Spring Forward" "Just in the nick of time comes novelist Michael Downing with "Spring Forward," a lively history aimed at debunking the 'uncanny idea of falsifying clock time' . . . As the perceptive Mr. Downing observes . . . stripped of its bogus efficiency arguments, Daylight Saving Time amounts to an extra hour for shopping and golf . . . Spring ahead and fore!" --"Wall Street Journal" "Downing's examples of the ravages of keeping time compete with one another for the most zany . . . [He] shows how Daylight Saving Time factored into the low-grade rural-urban civil war that began with industrialization and is today more commonly known as red versus blue . . . [Downing] performs the valuable service of forcing some realism into considerations of what Daylight Saving Time can actually accomplish." --"The New Republic" "Michael Downing's merry new book, Spring Forward, tells the story of America's odd and chaotic movement to change time. . . . [You] can't talk about daylight saving without laughing, because the history is so wacky." --"Boston Globe" ""Spring Forward" offers not only a history of time in the United States (and, for that matter, in much of the world) but also a wryly humorous look at the perennial clash over the usefulness of Daylight Saving Time . . . Fortunately for readers, he presents both sides of the case with wry skepticism . . . It's entertaining, informative and--yes--as light as 8 p.m. in the last week in June." --"St. Louis Post-Dispatch" ""Spring Forward" won't help you understand the wisdom of the practice, but it may help you laugh, especially as all the things you have been told over and over about daylight-saving time are revealed to be fiction. Downing's book won't make daylight-saving time more sensible, but it sure makes it more fun and hip to think about." --"Sacramento Bee" "Tufts University lecturer Michael Downing asserts in his new book, Spring Forward that profit, not patriotism motivated some of the Daylight Saving Time backers. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and big department stores led the charge . . .'Whenever Americans turned ahead their clocks, ' Downing writes in his book, 'somebody turned a profit.'" --"Cleveland Plain Dealer" "This short, jam-packed account by Downing rights the often misunderstood history . . . Downing brings it to life by dramatizing politicians and various industries pitted against one another in absurd, often hilarious debates. It's a colorful story of something we all take to be fundamental but through history has been maddening, divisive, and baffling." --"Publishers Weekly" "Stirring us from our chronological complacency . . . Novelist Downing writes gracefully, with a penchant for the strange detail, and he draws much mirth from the facts about Daylight Saving Time and its amorphous benefits." --"Booklist" "At last, a love story for adults - wrapped in a sophisticated mystery about art, religion and the fragility of the human heart. This is Michael Downing's witty, bracing love letter to the country that gave us Giotto and Dante, and to a small group of Americans, traveling with a certain amount of baggage, who've gone to Italy fleeing their own private sorrows, only to find what they didn't know they've been looking for. Downing's rendering of this exquisite world is so rich and authentic you might wake from this dream of a novel and feel you've actually been there." --Elizabeth Benedict, author of "Almost" and "The Practice of Deceit," editor of "What My Mother Gave Me: Thirty-One Women on the Gifts that Mattered Most" "There are art lessons, history lessons, and life lessons here, and the amazing and original thing is how all the entanglements sustain the possibility of romance. Michael Downing gives us a witty female narrator with the smarts to make us trust her story - an Italianate dream about beauty and grief, Giotto and Dante, heaven and hell, in which everything gets all mixed up and keeps morphing into something else. It's bumper cars with biscotti and Prosecco. And when you laugh, it's because you've been hit by something that altered your course, something unexpected, inevitable, and true." --Dennis McFarland, author of "Nostalgia" and "Singing Boy" Praise for "Spring Forward" "Just in the nick of time comes novelist Michael Downing with "Spring Forward," a lively history aimed at debunking the 'uncanny idea of falsifying clock time' . . . As the perceptive Mr. Downing observes . . . stripped of its bogus efficiency arguments, Daylight Saving Time amounts to an extra hour for shopping and golf . . . Spring ahead and fore!" --"Wall Street Journal" "Downing's examples of the ravages of keeping time compete with one another for the most zany . . . [He] shows how Daylight Saving Time factored into the low-grade rural-urban civil war that began with industrialization and is today more commonly known as red versus blue . . . [Downing] performs the valuable service of forcing some realism into considerations of what Daylight Saving Time can actually accomplish." --"The New Republic" "Michael Downing's merry new book, Spring Forward, tells the story of America's odd and chaotic movement to change time. . . . [You] can't talk about daylight saving without laughing, because the history is so wacky." --"Boston Globe" ""Spring Forward" offers not only a history of time in the United States (and, for that matter, in much of the world) but also a wryly humorous look at the perennial clash over the usefulness of Daylight Saving Time . . . Fortunately for readers, he presents both sides of the case with wry skepticism . . . It's entertaining, informative and--yes--as light as 8 p.m. in the last week in June." --"St. Louis Post-Dispatch" ""Spring Forward" won't help you understand the wisdom of the practice, but it may help you laugh, especially as all the things you have been told over and over about daylight-saving time are revealed to be fiction. Downing's book won't make daylight-saving time more sensible, but it sure makes it more fun and hip to think about." --"Sacramento Bee" "Tufts University lecturer Michael Downing asserts in his new book, "Spring Forward" that profit, not patriotism motivated some of the Daylight Saving Time backers. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and big department stores led the charge . . .'Whenever Americans turned ahead their clocks, ' Downing writes in his book, 'somebody turned a profit.'" --"Cleveland Plain Dealer" "This short, jam-packed account by Downing rights the often misunderstood history . . . Downing brings it to life by dramatizing politicians and various industries pitted against one another in absurd, often hilarious debates. It's a colorful story of something we all take to be fundamental but through history has been maddening, divisive, and baffling." --"Publishers Weekly" "Stirring us from our chronological complacency . . . Novelist Downing writes gracefully, with a penchant for the strange detail, and he draws much mirth from the facts about Daylight Saving Time and its amorphous benefits." --"Booklist" Praise for "Breakfast with Scot" "The prose in Downing's fourth novel is melodious and lucid. This heartwarming tale nobly defines and describes a potent, realistic new configuration of contemporary American values." -"Publishers Weekly" "Scot [is] one of the great child creations of recent literature--a dainty, prepubescent Holden Caulfield with a thing for neckerchiefs." --"Salon" "Witty, poignant, laugh-out-loud funny, deftly insightful and full of people you wish you knew--plus a few you're glad you don't. It's a turn-of-the-millennium look at parenthood, families, relationships and who gets to wear eyeliner...Scot is irresistible." --"Newsday" "Lively, quick, and vivid...Downing explores what it truly means to be a family." "Booklist" "Downing's rich descriptions of the chapel in Padua and fastidious art lectures are reminiscent of the work of Dan Brown, but the mysteries here are mostly of the heart. This story of life after loss delivers equal measures of history and hope."--"Booklist" "At last, a love story for adults - wrapped in a sophisticated mystery about art, religion and the fragility of the human heart. This is Michael Downing's witty, bracing love letter to the country that gave us Giotto and Dante, and to a small group of Americans, traveling with a certain amount of baggage, who've gone to Italy fleeing their own private sorrows, only to find what they didn't know they've been looking for. Downing's rendering of this exquisite world is so rich and authentic you might wake from this dream of a novel and feel you've actually been there." --Elizabeth Benedict, author of "Almost" and "The Practice of Deceit," editor of "What My Mother Gave Me: Thirty-One Women on the Gifts that Mattered Most" "There are art lessons, history lessons, and life lessons here, and the amazing and original thing is how all the entanglements sustain the possibility of romance. Michael Downing gives us a witty female narrator with the smarts to make us trust her story - an Italianate dream about beauty and grief, Giotto and Dante, heaven and hell, in which everything gets all mixed up and keeps morphing into something else. It's bumper cars with biscotti and Prosecco. And when you laugh, it's because you've been hit by something that altered your course, something unexpected, inevitable, and true." --Dennis McFarland, author of "Nostalgia" and "Singing Boy" Praise for "Spring Forward" "Just in the nick of time comes novelist Michael Downing with "Spring Forward," a lively history aimed at debunking the 'uncanny idea of falsifying clock time' . . . As the perceptive Mr. Downing observes . . . stripped of its bogus efficiency arguments, Daylight Saving Time amounts to an extra hour for shopping and golf . . . Spring ahead and fore!" --"Wall Street Journal" "Downing's examples of the ravages of keeping time compete with one another for the most zany . . . [He] shows how Daylight Saving Time factored into the low-grade rural-urban civil war that began with industrialization and is today more commonly known as red versus blue . . . [Downing] performs the valuable service of forcing some realism into considerations of what Daylight Saving Time can actually accomplish." --"The New Republic" "Michael Downing's merry new book, Spring Forward, tells the story of America's odd and chaotic movement to change time. . . . [You] can't talk about daylight saving without laughing, because the history is so wacky." --"Boston Globe" ""Spring Forward" offers not only a history of time in the United States (and, for that matter, in much of the world) but also a wryly humorous look at the perennial clash over the usefulness of Daylight Saving Time . . . Fortunately for readers, he presents both sides of the case with wry skepticism . . . It's entertaining, informative and--yes--as light as 8 p.m. in the last week in June." --"St. Louis Post-Dispatch" ""Spring Forward" won't help you understand the wisdom of the practice, but it may help you laugh, especially as all the things you have been told over and over about daylight-saving time are revealed to be fiction. Downing's book won't make daylight-saving time more sensible, but it sure makes it more fun and hip to think about." --"Sacramento Bee" "Tufts University lecturer Michael Downing asserts in his new book, "Spring Forward" that profit, not patriotism motivated some of the Daylight Saving Time backers. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and big department stores led the charge . . .'Whenever Americans turned ahead their clocks, ' Downing writes in his book, 'somebody turned a profit.'" --"Cleveland Plain Dealer" "This short, jam-packed account by Downing rights the often misunderstood history . . . Downing brings it to life by dramatizing politicians and various industries pitted against one another in absurd, often hilarious debates. It's a colorful story of something we all take to be fundamental but through history has been maddening, divisive, and baffling." --"Publishers Weekly" "Stirring us from our chronological complacency . . . Novelist Downing writes gracefully, with a penchant for the strange detail, and he draws much mirth from the facts about Daylight Saving Time and its amorphous benefits." --"Booklist" Praise for "Breakfast with Scot" "The prose in Downing's fourth novel is melodious and lucid. This heartwarming tale nobly defines and describes a potent, realistic new configuration of contemporary American values." -"Publishers Weekly" "Scot [is] one of the great child creations of recent literature--a dainty, prepubescent Holden Caulfield with a thing for neckerchiefs." --"Salon" "Witty, poignant, laugh-out-loud funny, deftly insightful and full of people you wish you knew--plus a few you're glad you don't. It's a turn-of-the-millennium look at parenthood, families, relationships and who gets to wear eyeliner...Scot is irresistible." --"Newsday" "Lively, quick, and vivid...Downing explores what it truly means to be a family." "Booklist"