When Kate Holohan’s husband dies suddenly, the extent of his disastrous financial speculation is revealed – together with a mistress and a secret love-nest in the small Italian fishing port of Camogli. Unwilling to take on the ocean of debt and deceit she has inherited, Kate abandons her home and teaching job and flees to Italy in the hope of making a new life.

Her new neighbour, Anna Ferrara, is a formidable and mysterious older lady who takes Kate under her wing, teaching her Italian, finding her work and offering her friendship and more. But it will be Anna’s past – as a journalist, writer, former Resistance fighter and a committed communist – that will also challenge Kate and force her to reconsider her responsibilities back home and the values she truly wants to represent.

Over three seasons, William Wall conjures the colours, tastes and scents of Liguria, as Empty Bed Blues explores the intersection of friendship, love, language, debt and politics, all told with humour, sensitivity and gold standard storytelling.

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A quietly devastating expression of his strength – the precision of a poet’s worldview elegantly extended to achieve a meaningful narrative ...Through his lyrical style, Wall offers a moving account of a woman stoically refusing to unravel, with astutely drawn characters and moments of great levity. Ultimately the time spent with Kate in her Italian idyll has the potential to prove as restorative for the reader as it does for her. This is delicate storytelling that elevates the trivialities of life to something significant, as all great literature does.

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‘The author’s love for Italy imbues his latest novel, Empty Bed Blues, with a wonderful sense of place.’

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Empty Bed Blues is a novel with great depth. There are multiple layers and many literary references scattered throughout that add a richness to the narrative but at no point overwhelm it.