Me, You

The unnamed narrator of this slim, alluring novel recalls a summer spent at age sixteen on an idyllic Italian island off the coast of Naples in the 1950s, where he spends his days with Nicola, a local fisherman. The narrator falls in love with Caia, who shares with him that she’s Jewish, saved by Italian soldiers from the Nazis, who killed the rest of her Yugoslav family. 

The boy demands answers about the war from the adults around him, but is rebuffed by everyone. Only Nicola, a local fisherman who served with the Italian army in Yugoslavia, offers any clues to Italy’s complicity.

The narrator’s passion for Caia and his ardent patriotism lead him to a flamboyant, cataclysmic act of destruction that brings his tale to an end.

Part love story, part ghost story, ME, YOU is a haunting tale rendered in evocative prose. Margaret Prior 

“Poetic . . . charged with anger and desire.” –The New York Times Book Review

“Alluring . . . shimmeringly lyrical.” Publishers Weekly

From Publishers Weekly 
This coming-of-age tale brings the aftermath of the Holocaust to an idyllic Italian island off the coast of Naples. The nameless narrator recalls a summer vacation there during the 1950s; at the age of 16, he learns to fish, falls in love, and discovers the long aftermath of World War II. Eschewing the company of foreign tourists and younger children, he finds a teacher of life in Nicola, a local fisherman who communicates his love of the sea and his memories of war to the boy yearning for knowledge. Attracted by the older, more mysterious girls on the island, the narrator falls in love with Caia, who shares her secret with him: she’s Jewish, saved by Italian soldiers from the Nazis who killed the rest of her Yugoslav family. Caia thinks that the narrator shares her father’s mannerisms, and may be his reincarnation. Initiated into seamanship by one vicious fish bite and a torrential night expedition, the boy is finally inspired to manifest his newfound manhood, his passion for Caia and his ardent Italian patriotism in a flamboyant, cataclysmic act of destruction, during which his youth, his summer and his tale come to an end…an alluring and poignant story about an adolescent in love, in search of himself and of history. 

Library Journal 
Memories of a father killed in World War II come to the surface in this dramatic short novel, set in the early 1950s on a small island near Capri. The narrator, a young man from the city, is spending the summer with his uncle, who is teaching him to fish…his circle of friends includes Caia, a young orphaned woman with whom our narrator instantly falls in love. He discovers that she is Jewish and delights in sharing this secret with her. At times, he acts and speaks to her as her father did as if he embodies her father’s spirit. When German visitors on holiday sing the SS anthem in a restaurant where Caia and her friends are eating, she becomes angry and her secret is revealed. This beautifully written novel is highly recommended for all public libraries. 

Kirkus Reviews 
A bestseller at home in Italy, the first of De Lucas fiction to be published here is the touchingly simple tale, 1950s-set, of a Neapolitan boy who falls in love with a slightly older girl and finds she’s a Holocaust survivor. The unnamed narrator spends his summers on an island where his uncle owns a seagoing fishing boat that’s actually used and cared for by a fisherman named Nicola, who lives year-round on the island. Most summers, the boy is content simply to go out with Nicola to set nets and draw them in, learning all he can of craft and courage from the taciturn but kindly Nicola including how to be stoical when he is bitten in the hand by a moray, and how not to be afraid when caught in a storm. This summer, though, the boy has a newly consuming interest in the still-recent war, and only Nicola will talk with him about it just as only Nicola, who was sent as a soldier to Yugoslavia, knows that the new girl, an orphan, who’s just visiting for the summer is really not named Caia, but instead Caie, a name meaning life… One night a group of drunk German tourists sing SS hymns and Caie becomes unhinged; a fight ensues but then all seems over. Caie will soon go back to boarding school, her life as normal as it can be. But a deep memory-force is left behind in the boy, who is compelled somehow to find vengeance on behalf of Caie and her lost family. An understated, delicate and believable story of adolescence, history, and war. 

Rights sold
France (Gallimard)
Germany (Ullstein)
Israel (Hakibbutz Hameuchad)
Spain (Seix Barral/Bromera)
US/UK (OUT OF PRINT)