Italy A century ago, E.M. Forster's heroine in his novel A Room with a View faints dead away when she witnesses a gangland killing in Florence's Piazza della Signoria. But slowly the vivid otherness of Italy teaches this outwardly conventional English girl to trust her own passionate heart. In Konnie Ellis' new novel A Picnic in Venice we meet a sensitive but mixed-up American, Gina, who comes to Italy to paint. She meets a mosaic artist who expands her personal and artistic horizons, and a gypsy mystic who senses the inner recesses of her mind better than her own psychiatrist. By summer's end, her family relationships are stressed to the breaking point, and she is faced with wrenching choices. Every scene in Picnic in Venice has a bold, cinematic quality.