The novels of Amanda Prantera slip down easier than raspberries and mascarpone, but they are far from being a conventional dish. Arminta Wallace hears why her next book may be her last
Summer, and the reading is easy: or is supposed to be. But if you're the sort of reader who finds bright-pink chicklit drearier than a wet November, hold the well-chilled Valpolicella until you've checked out the opus of one Amanda Prantera; a dozen novels whose combination of Italian sunshine, British eccentricity, wry humour and a dash of philosophy allow them to slip down easier than a medium-sized helping of raspberries and mascarpone.
In Don Giovanna, a group of footloose Britishers stage a Mozart opera in the Umbrian countryside. In Letter to Lorenzo, a well-heeled Roman businessman dies in an explosion and, to the consternation of his English wife, becomes a terrorist suspect.
Zoë Trope is a sort of thinking woman's Bridget Jones. Prantera's new book, Spoiler, is about a student priest who may or may not have discovered the antichrist; and somewhere along the way there was a book entitled Conversations with Lord Byron on Perversion, 163 Years After His Lordship's Death, which dealt - despite all appearances to the contrary - with the subject of information technology.
Prantera is one of those writers who seems to be able to bring an enviably light touch to almost anything. Still, though, the antichrist? Student priests with gay tendencies? How on earth did she research it? Laughter bubbles down the phone line from her summer home near Perugia.
"Funny you should ask - I had awful difficulty," she says, her voice an intriguing mix of fruity English vowels and soft Italian consonants. "There's this mysterious English seminary in Rome, very snooty and very masculine. I rang them up and spoke to the vice-rector and he said: 'Oh, you're writing a book, how wonderful, of course we'll help you, this is my e-mail address'. And he said he'd answer any queries I might have, too delighted, etc, etc. So I sent him off an e-mail - and it bounced back at me. I rang up again and he said: 'Oh, how foolish of me, I must have got the dot out of place' - and he gave me another one.
"This happened, if you can believe it, three times. And the third time I thought: 'Well, that's it - it's a ploy.' So I didn't talk to them at all after that. Didn't even get my nose inside."
"Of course," she adds quickly, demonstrating a political nous any aspiring Vatican monsignor would envy, "the English seminary in Rome is not a bit like the one I describe in my book."
Spoiler reaches beneath the civilised overlay of its old- fashioned setting to reveal obsession and madness lurking beneath, but despite its central mystery it isn't a conventional crime novel or even a super-stylish one à la P.D. James. The narrative toys with the conventions of detective fiction and plays fast and loose with typography - much of it is "hand-written" in the form of an italicised diary, and there are lists and bite-sized chunks of "academic research" and such-like.
"It just came out that way," says Prantera. "I don't know if - did you find it a bit slow to start?"
I assure her I didn't.
"Oh," she says. "When I read the proofs I thought: 'Well, really, this doesn't get going fast enough. . .' "
Born in East Anglia, Prantera went to Italy when she was 20 and has been living there ever since.
"I came from a family where females were not educated," she says. "My father was terrified of educated females. He said, you know, it will ruin all your chances. I don't know what my chances were supposed to be, but anyway. . ."
Another peal of merry laughter. What was it that appealed to her about Italy? "Nothing, really," she says. "I was just at a loose end and came here to fill in the time. Then I met Cosimo and got married immediately and had kids. I see now, of course, I was looking for a family. Then, when I could look around me a bit, I did my A levels when I was thirtysomething - 32, I think. And then I started studying philosophy. I got myself an external degree from a university in Rome, and they took me on as a research student at London University."
Hence her familiarity with Socrates, Nietzsche and co. Why did she start to write fiction, then? "I applied for a post as reader here at the university," she says. "'Reader' in Italy is much more humble than it sounds - you literally sit there and read English texts to students. Hobbes and Bacon and things. It's very well-paid but you have to push for it, you know? You have to have a bit of clout. And they said: 'We'll let you know in a year.' I thought: 'A year? What am I to do - sit on my rump for a year?' Because the kids were grown by then.
"So I said: 'Well, I'll write a sort of ontological spoof.' My first book was the story of a positivist, materialist, cocky young philosopher who meets and falls in love with a female werewolf. Which, as you can imagine, absolutely throws him."
After three of these philosophical conundrums she began to write books which, she says, have "more of a biographical bias" - the Italian comedies. Spoiler is a sort of return to her fictional roots. Does she mind that critics tend to compare her to Muriel Spark?
"I think she's cleverer. She's sharper. I'm interested in telling a good yarn," says Prantera. "I wouldn't say her forte is that, but rather her capacity for making us look at ourselves and shiver."
Readers who have reached the final page of Spoiler may well demur. But what's next for Prantera? Is she writing another book?
"I've finished another book," she says. "I can't tell you what it's about, because you're not meant to know what it's about until you reach the end."
This mysterious manuscript may well, she says, be her fictional swansong. "I'm into translation at the moment, mostly from German into English. There's no point in writing fiction if you haven't got the big urge - better to pick up something good by somebody else and introduce that instead."
Extraordinary. Catch her while you can.
Amanda Prantera will read from her latest novel, Spoiler, and give a public interview at the Edinburgh Book Festival on August 25th. Spoiler is published by Bloomsbury on September 1st, priced £9.99