The Tower

Once upon a time, there was a tower on a hill, beyond the dark trees, somewhere north. An octagonal tower on two levels: glass upstairs and stone below, beneath a steep slate roof - a folly, it was said. According to locals, a young woman named Annie who fell ill was confined to the tower by her father for three years and died there, alone. Fascinated by Annie's story, Thea Lenarduzzi attempts to piece the past together in a formidable act of imagination, which, tugging at the strings of the how, why and who of stories, begins to unravel the very idea of storytelling itself. Veering between fiction, memoir, fairy tale and folklore, The Tower is an extraordinary book about power, abuse and why we don't always tell the story we set out to tell.

About the Author :
Thea Lenarduzzi is a writer, broadcaster and editor. Her debut, Dandelions, a family memoir and cultural history of migration between Italy and England, won the 2020 Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize and was shortlisted for the Ackerley Prize for 'literary autobiography of outstanding merit'. The Tower is her second book.

Review :
‘Lenarduzzi’s book is a compelling read, elegant and artful, intertwining myth, fairy tale and reality. Is it a novel or a memoir? Ultimately, perhaps both.’ — Lee Langley, The Spectator ‘Thea Lenarduzzi works against the grain of her own and readers’ expectations in this graceful book, in which stories are dismantled so that new truths can be found. Beautifully considered: The Tower is both delicate and wise.’ — Anne Enright, author of The Wren, The Wren ‘Life, and writing, can expand from a detail: to which extent must this detail be personal? In this remarkable and surprising book, Thea Lenarduzzi wanders trough the many paths of fiction-making, in a literary quest to find out if the girl in the tower is a romanticised symbol, an exhausted trope, a resourceful broken archive at the beginning of a powerful story, hers as much as ours. Truly fascinating and brimming with intellectual energy.’ — Claudia Durastanti, author of Strangers I Know ‘A hybrid, shifting, searching work that applies pressure to the boundaries between forms before it crosses them, The Tower asks questions about stories, narrative and history – and our uneasy inheritance of them – that linger long after the book’s final pages. I couldn’t get it out of my mind.’ — Helen Charman, author of Mother State ‘With her sensitive, fable-like unravelling of a mysterious anecdote, Thea Lenarduzzi enlists and subverts all the elements of a gripping story – a secret, a journey, doubt and denouement – to emerge with an intricately crafted meditation on the nature of narrative itself. The Tower masterfully loops back on itself and retraces its own steps to uncover the secrets, wishes and fears that lurk in the stories we tell about ourselves, and what draws us to those of others.’ — Daisy Lafarge, author of Lovebug ‘A fascinating and shapeshifting book that is simultaneously a literary pursuit and a forensic examination of power, abuse and the human scope for mythologizing. The result is pure magic.’ — Catherine Taylor, author of The Stirrings ‘In her second remarkable and equally wise book, Lenarduzzi explores how we shape and share our stories – of ourselves and of others. Some are rooted in truth, others are constructed over generations of telling, and then there are those that relate to the depths of consciousness. She leads us with lyrical and meticulous prose via convincing digressions to an unexpected place to which I feel privileged to have journeyed.’ — Julia Bueno, author of Everyone’s A Critic ‘In The Tower, Thea Lenarduzzi offers a brilliant and exacting meditation on the stories we tell about a life – and the cultural and familial forces of thought that can obscure self-understanding. Tracing the fate of a young woman exiled to a stone tower after a tuberculosis diagnosis, Lenarduzzi braids archival enquiry with imaginative force, illuminating how the past shapes our present griefs and inheritances. This is a rare kind of book: intimate yet capacious, unsettling yet precise in its enquiry into harm, inheritance and the limits of language. The result is a profound reckoning with memory and silence: what we remember, what we omit and why.’ — Meghan O’Rourke, author of The Invisible Kingdom ‘The Tower is about the allure (and refusal) of certain narratives, about the sublime quest an author takes when she embarks on the act of storytelling. Its form – a composite of fiction, memoir, history – mirrors its subject matter and, excitingly, “stages” its very questions. In this elegantly composed, layered and expansive book, Thea Lenarduzzi articulates something of the mysterious nature of stories while also making an argument for all that is unknowable.’ — Lauren Aimee Curtis, author of Strangers at the Port ‘Dandelions is a book of hauntings, intensely experienced, pierced by occasional terrors, yet irradiated throughout by passionate attachment. Generations of family ghosts wander between Italy and England, their lives summoned from a beloved grandmother’s long memories and the author’s own wide-roaming, often poetic reflections on botany, history and language. Thea Lenarduzzi has spread out before us a feast of sensuous and sensitive, nuanced and deeply appealing testimony to migration, survival, and complicated identities at a time when such thoughtfulness is rare and desperately needed.’ — Marina Warner, author of Inventory of a Life Mislaid (praise for Dandelions) ‘Beautifully observed and written with heart and an infectious curiosity, Thea Lenarduzzi’s Dandelions parses the complex ways in which we live out our histories and carry the past within us, through ritual, food, language and legend. Like rifling through an overflowing drawer or opening an ancient photo album, Lenarduzzi unearths glinting gems of family fiction, introducing us to a shifting cast of memorable characters whose journeys, stories and passions it’s our joy to share.’ — Francesca Wade, author of Square Haunting (praise for Dandelions) ‘In this subtle and elegant family memoir, Thea Lenarduzzi gathers the ghost seeds between her present life in England and her family’s past in Italy. A meditation on roots, inheritance and homesickness, Dandelions is also a reminder that what will survive of us is love.’ — Frances Wilson, author of Burning Man (praise for Dandelions) ‘Dandelions is spellbinding. Like the polished beads of a secular rosary, each bearing a remembrance, Lenarduzzi’s ancestral memoir conjures intimate histories of migration, love, and loss across decades of passages between Italy and England. Her redoubtable grandmother Dirce will lure you in, as she unfolds fragmentary myths with a sly wit, whispering ascolta, “listen” – and you won’t resist.’ — Anna Della Subin, author of Accidental Gods (praise for Dandelions) ‘Dandelions is a beautiful, precise and exceptionally intelligent family memoir. In it, Lenarduzzi carefully detangles a complex web of interlocking stories, which she finds to be threaded through with warmth, aspiration and hope. In the figure of Dirce we find a kind-hearted grandmother and compendium of stories both – offering wisdom and familial mythology like a Friulian oracle. Dandelions marks the arrival of a stunning new voice.’ — Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment (praise for Dandelions)