Italy

Italy becomes a temporary refuge and then the setting for a decisive break in Daisy Jones’s marriage to Niccolo Argento. A sudden trip to Florence leads to a wedding in Rome; later, an accusation, a violent fight, and Daisy’s growing fear of what the relationship is doing to her turn the journey into an exit. The country’s role in the story is less a stable home than a passage from impulsive intimacy to self-preservation.

From Patong to Florence

While Daisy and Niccolo are at a disco in Patong, he proposes that they leave for Italy so he can show her his country. Daisy recalls that she must have arranged their tickets, which appeared at the door one morning. The decision is made quickly: she remembers being halfway to Italy before realizing that Simone Jackson was traveling to meet her. The trip begins as an unplanned romantic departure, but it also separates Daisy from a friend who is trying to find her.

Simone’s account supplies the other side of that separation. After arriving in Thailand and learning that Daisy, who had checked in under the name Lola La Cava, had already left, Simone tracks her by impersonating her in a call to her credit-card company. She eventually finds Daisy in Rome. Italy is therefore both the destination of Daisy’s sudden escape with Niccolo and the place where Simone catches up with her.

Florence and the Wedding in Rome

In Florence’s Boboli Gardens, Niccolo asks Daisy to marry him. They then fly to Rome, where a family friend of Niccolo’s, a priest, performs the wedding. Daisy recalls telling the priest that she was Catholic, although she was not. Her memory of the ceremony is closely tied to what she wore: an ivory, off-the-shoulder cotton-lace dress with large bell sleeves. Looking back, she distinguishes the marriage from the dress: she regrets the former but not the latter. That distinction gives the Italian wedding a double character—an impulsive commitment she later rejects, preserved in memory through an object she still values.

Violence and Departure

The marriage’s danger comes into focus during a fight in an Italian hotel room. Niccolo accuses Daisy of having slept with Billy Dunne in Kansas, an accusation she says she cannot understand because she had not even spoken to Billy there. The confrontation escalates: Daisy throws bottles, Niccolo smashes his hand through a window, and Daisy finds herself bleeding, crying, and with an earring torn through her ear. Although the two end the episode holding one another and promising not to leave or fight that way again, Daisy remembers thinking that she might not want love if this was what it felt like.

The next morning, before they are due to fly to Seattle, Daisy wakes soaking wet at the base of the shower, confused and groggy. Niccolo is watching over her. She later describes an internal switch: she knows she has to get away and take care of herself, believing that he would not kill her but would let her die. Once he falls asleep, she packs her things, takes both plane tickets, and goes to the airport. From a pay phone, she leaves a message at the hotel for Niccolo: Lola La Cava wants a divorce. The message uses the name under which she had traveled, while the action marks her decision to leave the marriage.

Italy in the Oral History

These events are conveyed through retrospective accounts rather than a single impersonal narration. Daisy recounts the spontaneous journey, wedding, fight, and departure; Simone recalls the search that brought her to Rome. The book as a whole is compiled from interviews and other material, and its author acknowledges that witnesses sometimes give differing accounts, with truth often lying between them. Here, the distinct recollections place Italy at the intersection of Daisy’s private history and the effort of others to locate her: first a romantic destination, then the setting of a marriage she chooses to leave.