When the Mountains Dance by Christine Toomey

Wendy reviews books set in Italy. For more articles like this one, subscribe to her Substack channel Italy Writers and get in touch via Sunflower Publishing.

Summary

‘In the wake of the strongest earthquake in Italy for nearly forty years and the many aftershocks that followed, Italians began speaking of the earth beneath our feet as la terra ballerina, the dancing earth. The dance they spoke of was unrelenting.’

Christine Toomey had bought a neglected house in Le Marche years earlier. The plan was simple enough. Restore it slowly. Use it as a place to pause between foreign assignments. A change in pace to a previous life spent reporting on wars, disaster and ongoing political upheaval. In 2016, that plan collapsed when a sequence of earthquakes tore through central Italy, damaging towns, homes and lives.

What remained, once the dust settled, was a question. How do you hold on to a place when its foundations have given way?

In the attic of her damaged house, Toomey uncovered a small, forgotten collection of objects. Paintings. Books. Letters. Journals. She found an old map, edges worn thin, with just one word scrawled on it: Terremoto. That one word, that battered map, set her off on a new path—digging into the past, following the trail of earlier quakes, and the stories of people who survived them.

The book that emerges moves between personal experience, history and travel. It is not driven by spectacle. Its interest lies in accumulation. Small details. Lives lived quietly in places shaped by forces beyond human control.

My Review

This is a book that takes its time. It does not rush towards disaster, even though disaster is inevitable. Instead, it builds a sense of place, allowing the reader to understand what is at stake before anything is lost.

Early on, Toomey explores how earthquakes have been understood in Italy across centuries. Religious interpretations sit alongside superstition and scientific explanation. None are dismissed. All are presented as attempts to explain fear. The approach feels careful rather than comprehensive, which suits the subject.

There is also an unflinching acknowledgement of why people are drawn to this part of Italy. Hill towns. Stone houses. A slower rhythm of life. Toomey does not undermine that attraction, but she places it firmly within its physical reality. The Apennines are still moving. They always have been.

She writes about reports of animals behaving differently before earthquakes. Not as folklore, and not as proof of foresight. Simply as observation. Animals notice changes humans do not. That may be all there is to it. The restraint here matters.

When the earthquake finally arrives, the writing tightens. The sound of the ground is described as a roar. The sensation is disorientating and physical. The image of mountains crying out feels accurate rather than dramatic. Anyone who has experienced an earthquake will recognise it.

The story of Amandola unfolds gradually. The town is introduced through routine. Bread baking in the morning. Espresso at the bar. Familiar faces in the square. These are not decorative details. They establish what daily life looks like before it is disrupted.

Toomey’s decision to buy her house begins almost casually, prompted by a magazine article read on a winter train journey. The description is spare. Mist on the windows. Fields sliding past. A photograph that suggests a different way of living. The scene works because it is not overplayed.

When she first opens the shutters of the abandoned house, the view takes in terracotta rooftops and the church of Saint Augustine. Swifts circle the bell tower. The building itself is in poor condition, empty for decades, but the mountains beyond hold her attention. The pull is immediate and understandable.

Restoring the house is slow and often frustrating. Tradesmen come and go. Plans change. Progress is uneven. At one point, an unexploded Second World War bomb is discovered upstairs. It is treated almost lightly at the time, a story that later turns into local gossip.

Toomey became known, half-jokingly, as la signora della bomba. In retrospect, the discovery feels less amusing. A reminder that the past, like the ground itself, has a habit of resurfacing.

As work continues, a collection of objects emerges from the house. Statues. Paintings. Letters. Journals belonging to Don Federico Bellesi, a priest who lived there a century earlier. The items raise questions that remain unanswered for years, returning whenever Toomey is back in Amandola.

One of the book’s recurring ideas is that houses absorb the lives lived inside them. Not in a mystical sense, but through repetition. Habits. Objects left behind. The slow accumulation of memory.

The earthquakes of October 2016 bring an abrupt shift. Toomey is in London. Her neighbours are in Amandola. Phone calls are hurried and confused. Trees sway violently. Buildings crack. People believe they are about to die.

Her house is declared unsafe. An eviction notice is pinned to the door. What follows is not a single event but a drawn-out crisis. Aftershocks continue. Snow cuts off villages. Power lines fail. People are displaced for months.

One account lingers. A man forced to leave his damaged home writes that it was so full of memories and affection that, without it, he could no longer smile. The loss of the building becomes a loss of meaning.

Throughout this section, Toomey returns to the idea of home as anchor. Memory and identity are tied to physical space. When that space becomes dangerous, the sense of safety it once provided collapses.

As rebuilding begins, attention turns again to the letters and journals left in the attic. The book shifts into investigation. Who was Don Federico Bellesi? Why did his belongings remain behind? The correspondence offers glimpses of daily life, private feeling and social custom from another era.

At the centre of this material is a map dated 1914, marked with two place names in Sicily and the word Terremoto. The question it raises leads Toomey across Italy, tracing the priest’s movements and the earthquakes he witnessed.

Don Federico becomes a quiet presence throughout this journey. Through his story, Toomey reflects on her own life, including a diagnosis of a heart murmur, which she describes as her personal fault line. The comparison is subtle and never laboured.

Why I Recommend This Book

This book brings together history, travel and personal experience without forcing connections. It avoids sentimentality and does not search for uplift where it would feel false. The communities of the Apennines are presented with care and restraint.

It is a book about Italy that resists idealisation. Beauty exists alongside difficulty. Renovation is slow. Security is fragile. Loss arrives without warning.

The writing is controlled and attentive. Toomey allows space for the reader to think, rather than directing emotional response. The effect is lasting rather than immediate.

This book hit close to home for me. I bought a place in Abruzzo just a day after the L’Aquila earthquake in 2009. The same disaster the book mentions. Reading about it pulled up old grief, but also a kind of careful hope. Life keeps moving, even when everything feels like it’s falling apart.