Someone mentioned the de Cadhilac family...they are still around and thriving. I've met a contessa by that name who lives just across the Tiber in Umbria. She has a B&B in hr country villa.
I recommend: Artemisia: A Novel by Alexandra Lapierre and Liz Heron. This is historical fiction that will greatly enhance any visit to Rome and Florence. First, the book gives a great primer on how art was commissioned during the Renaissance and Baroque periods. It gives great insight into many well known works of art as well as the inner workings of papal politics, the Borghese's (everyone loves the Gallerie Borghese), and even the streets around Spagna and Popolo. Looking for the tomb of Artimisia's mother in Popolo is quite fun. Similiarly, the book gives quite a bit of history about the Medici's and the art and party scenes in Florence. Party's at the Pitti Palace and even the beginnings of the Casa Bounaratti which is one of the best museums in Florence that few people ever discuss. Plus, it is well written and a good story.
I just finished "Catching Fireflies" by Tony Rocca. He's Italian by background. She is Jewish and has lived everywhere and speaks a pile of languages. Neither speaks Italian, however.
They both live in England.
He abandons his career as a reporter and she abandons hers as a travel writer. They, of course, move to Italy. They buy a ruin in Tuscany and turn into into a small hotel.
Rocca has an engaging writing style and sometimes I was laughing out loud. In my opinion it is much better than Frances Mayle. I bought it off bookcloseouts.com (a great website, by the way), but I believe it its sold on amazon.
Posts: 275 | Location: McLean, VA | Registered: 14 August 2006
I know it's been mentioned many times but I just finished Eric Newby's Love & War in the Appenines and it's difficult not to hold back tears just exclaiming how wonderful it was. I had first discovered Newby when I read A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush shortly after I had returned from that part of the world and now I understand a little of what made his travels such spiritual journeys.It was heartwrenching to read what the combination of war, deprivation and compassion of strangers can do to ones spirit. And the insight into what happens to the people even in the countryside in war-torn nations is pretty grim. Now I've started War in Val D'Orcia by Iris Origo. I'm flaberghasted how little I really knew about Italy during WWII.
Posts: 426 | Location: York, Pennsylvania | Registered: 03 March 2005
1. The wonderful tableau of Venetian society. 2. His take on sex. It seems sex was not about sex, but about power. Echoes the other statistical great lover of history - Xi Men Qing of Jin Ping Mei, but Xi was fiction. Casanova ws flesh and blood, et encore. 3. His honesty. OK, we all know his account of his escape from the Piombi did not tell all. Was he protecting others? The Venetian government at the time was a formidable big brother after all... I was referring to his honesty as when he recounted getting a sexually transmitted disease (for the first time?). Angry, he went to confront the lady in question, who said something like: what do you expect from sleeping with someone who "does" everybody on the Arsenale strip? And he was circumspect enough to reply something like: Doh. Here is someone who really did not try to enhance himself. How many politicians today (or ever) would be so honest in their autobio? Forgive me for paraphrasing as though Beavis and Butthead were his ghostwriters. (I might as well have written: he was all... and she was all...) I don't have the courage of digging into the smallest print possible in that copy of mine of the book, which leads to ... 4. Last but not least, the exquisitely bound édition Pléïades. So what if one goes blind?...
If you want a fun (aka "pool-side) reading, you might like this.
eat, pray, love: One woman's search for everything across Italy, India and Indonesia by: elizabeth gilbert I'm listening to this one right now and LOVE it. Every couple minutes I laugh out loud and wish I had a hard copy so I could underline something.
Originally posted by SL Jones: A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin
This is a giant of a book, both very literate and very fanciful. My husband and I think it is beautifully written and consider it a favorite. After traveling to Italy it was read again- just for the pleasure of the prose and the way it took us to Italy. Not everyone will like this book, but some of us will love it. Linda
Helprin is a fantastic writer. His images and words are so dense that you have to read them 3 and 4 times. I literally have my breath taken away by him.
A memoir I highly recommend is by Annie Hawes--Extra Virgin: A Young Woman Discovers the Italian Riviera, Where Every Month's Enchanted, published in 2002.
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This is truly one of the most charming memoirs that I have ever read. Maybe because Annie and I are separated at birth twins. I love poking around ruins, ghost towns of the SW, imagine myself fixing things up, living in bella Italia.
Compare and contrast this with Botticelli Blue Skies - a memoir that both Pauline and I would categorize as problematic at best. Merrill Joan Gerber is a "trailing spouse". Her husband is a professor who is assigned to a year teaching in Florence. OMG somebody make that happen in MY life, PLEASE. She lives in Florence for a year and she returns without a single italian friend. How can that be? The only people she talks to, interacts with are her husband and his students. I go to Rome for 3 weeks and find 5 new friends. People I visit, write, call, you know - friends. She rants about how the bus drivers don't have change, how tough it is to find a turkey in Florence for Thanksgiving, how things are better in America. ARRRGGGHHHH.
A friend of mine Susan Koppelman (the feminist author) knows Merrill and tells me she is agarophobic. So now I do cut her some slack. But I still am green with envy.
Originally posted by kfrer: I'd add Micheal Dibden to the list: his Aurelio Zen mysteries give great atmosphere for Rome and Venice.
I also love Michael Dibdin's Zen mysteries but, unfortunately, there will be only one more novel he wrote before his death this month. A nice review of his work HERE.
History: A Novel Elsa Morante 1977 (written in Italian first in 1974) 561 pages
I urge you to go to the Amazon link above and read the 20 reviews provided by readers of this book--it is a 5-star book.
This is a beautifully written, powerful book about World War II in Rome--focusing on a poor woman and her children and the horrible life they went through during the war. It is not a light read. War is awful--and the results of war on individuals and their families is tragic--this book proves that point.
I cannot help but think of the unknown individual people--the mothers, the children, the animals in today's war-filled countries. This book is a floodlight on the inhumanity of war.
It took me weeks and weeks to get through this book--I made the mistake of picking it up at night just before going to bed. Although it is beautifully written, and a pleasure to read her words--it requires an alert mind to stay with it. I recommend you pick it up first thing in the morning when your mind is sharp.
Anything by Italo Calvino, but especially Difficult Loves and Italian Folktales. His stories of Italy during WWII give a real sense of how difficult life was for the people who lived where the war was actually being waged- difficult for Americans to imagine, I think.
Matthew Spender's book, whose title I can't remember - oops - is a perfect counter to Tim Parks Italian Neighbours. Spender and his house were the "loose" frame for the film Stealing Beauty. He really has the life you imagine when you move to Italy!
I am also trying to work my way through Henry James' Italian Hours. Hard work but worth it.
Loved City of Falling Angels!
Posts: 7 | Location: Italy | Registered: 06 January 2007
A book i would highly recommend is 'The Miracle of Castel di Sangro' authored by Joe McGinnes. It explores the true tale of a remarkable 'rags to riches' story of an italian football squad. More than just a conventional memoir, it offers a wonderfully insight into italian life (both good and bad) through a colourful cast of characters and his delightful writing manner. His passions for 'il calcio' e l'italia are clearly evident. Even for non-sport fans, a worthwhile read!
I higly recommend An Italian Affair by Laura Fraser. It is the true story of a woman writer who travels to Italy after a painful divorce. Over time and many travels in various locations she finds herself with the help of a professor she met in Ischia. The professor teaches her lessons about love and living and herself. A wonderfully simple read that is charming but also very insightful. As the book ends we see that she has not only learned from her professor. Ultimately it is the experience of travel that has taught her about living life to its fullest and la bella vita.
Posts: 159 | Location: narragansett, rhode island | Registered: 24 September 2005
I read this book recently in Florence and enjoyed it immensely. It takes place in Florence in 1966-1967just after the Arno flooded. There is a lot of fascinating information about the restoration of paintings, frescoes, book binding,the city and history of Florence plus some racy parts as the young American heroine falls in love. Hellenga tells a good story. MayK
Posts: 86 | Location: Vancouver B.C. Canada | Registered: 28 August 2006
I bought Vanilla Beans and Brodo because it was mentioned on this list, but I'm finding it hard going. Does it get better? Maybe I just got turned off when she said she left Australia for Italy BECAUSE her daughter (in Australia) was going to have a baby and she didn't want to be a grandmother! As one who finds it hard to leave my grandaughter even for a few weeks in Europe, I find this inexplicable!
Not a novel or memoir per se, but I'm midway through the new translation of The Aeneid by Robert Fagles - it's wonderful! I also recently finished Steven Saylor's 'Roma: the Novel of Ancient Rome' - covers literally millenia in the history of Rome's founding, and is a bit of a departure from his Gordianus series.
Last week I read on the Dream of Italy blog about John Grisham's "The Broker", his 2005 novel set in Bologna. I picked it up at the library and am really enjoying it...the protagonist hasn't even gotten to Bologna yet, is still in Treviso studying Italian - make that DEVOURING Italian. I'm really enjoying it so far, both for the Italian setting and for the description of the challenge of learning a foreign language. It's the kind of book (I guess Gresham is known for this!) that's hard to put down! Anticipating Italy- Anne
In addition to many of the books already mentioned in this thread, I absolutely love Irving Stone's "The Agony and The Ecstasy." It follows the career of Michelangelo (and partly da Vinci also) and I find it fascinating. I reread it before every trip to Florence. It makes seeing the statue of David so much more meaningful for me. To read about how a piece of art was created centuries ago and then see it is beyond description.
Bernard Berenson's diary is not always easy to find, and there can be some dry spells among his almost daily entries, but most of it is fascinating. There are two volumes of them. Berenson was a connoisseur and appraiser of Renaissance art, lived a long life as an expat in Florence and knew just about everyone in the art, literary and academic worlds. I got interested after touring I Tatti, his villa outside Florence, and if you do, too, you can go on to read about his relationships with Isabella Gardner (founder of the Boston museum that bears her name) and also the Duveens -- a family of art dealers that built its business on feeding the appetites and egos of newly rich Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
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Posts: 161 | Location: Connecticut, USA | Registered: 02 March 2003
