Okay, this will be long. I hope I don't offend anyone by hogging so much space on this thread. (This is only a partial list from a longer one....... okay, so arrest me, I love books!!!!
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First, please be aware that these synopses are NOT MINE. I have been keeping a booklist of things to read for quite awhile, gathering titles from the Fodor's forum and other places. Most of these summaries are from amazon.com. The moderators may determine that they should not be repeated here, because of copyright laws. I don't want anyone to get in trouble.
Second, I have read the books with the
symbol. The others are books that I want to read, and would love to get on the Library Thing list that Ciaofornow has started for us. Mille grazie, CFN!!!!!
Here goes:
After Hannibal by Barry Unsworth.
A wonderful character study of Italians/English with Perugia as the background. Set in the beautiful landscape and rich history of Umbria, Italy, Booker Prize-winning author Barry Unsworth has written a witty and illuminating work of contemporary manners and morals. The region where Hannibal defeated the Romans is now prey to a different type of invasion: outsiders buying villas with innocent and not so innocent dreams.
Bel Vino: A Year of Sundrenched Pleasure Among the Vines of Tuscany by Isabella Dusi.
A must read for those interested in Brunello di Montalcino. Isobel and Lou moved to Montalcino and became Isabella and Luigi ten years ago and they have now been embraced by the locals and immersed in their antiquated customs and age-old feuds. Isabella takes the reader on a winding journey to discover the true aristocratic origins of the world-renowned wine Brunello di Montalcino on whose vintage the fortunes of many of the Montalcinesi depend. Taking us through the seasons of the wine harvest, Dusi weaves a path that brings in the local white-hooded monks who have lived in the Abbey of Sant' Antimo since at least 814; the last remaining local shoemaker; the harvesting of mushrooms, olives and truffles; an archery contest with a local village at which passions run high; and the fight to save a 1000-year-old church with no foundations. As an insider, Dusi is able to portray Tuscan life with all its idyllic charms whilst also giving an intriguing insight into the daily workings of the ancient village of Montalcino.
Iris Origo : Marchesa Of Val D'orcia by the biographer Caroline Moorehead.
A Crown of Fire, by Pierre Van Paassen. A biography of Girolamo Savonarola.
Daughters of the Prince by Noel Barber.
It's set in pre-WWII and WWII-era Florence, Rome, and London. Among other things, it provided some interesting background info about how Florence's art treasures were (mostly) preserved in WWII. From Publishers Weekly After Barber ( The Weeping and the Laughter ) died in 1988, with more than half of this book completed, his associate Alan Wykes brought it to its planned conclusion. The result is a formulaic though entertaining romance, with war intruding on an idyll that begins in Italy in 1938. Three young men--Steve, an American playboy; Kurt, a German musician; Hamilton Johns, an English painter--who share a house near Florence, meet and fall in love with three beautiful Italian sisters, the daughters of Prince Caeseri. As the couples pair off with remarkable ease, we follow their fortunes through the narration of Ham, the painter, whose contacts in the Italian art world, notably with Bernard Berenson at the fabled I Tatti villa, make him the most memorable of the otherwise stereotypical trio. Inevitably, political tensions impinge on everyone's happiness. Kurt returns to Germany and the military; Steve to the States; Ham to England. Recruited into the secret service, he comes back to Italy via cloak-and-dagger operations that involve Kurt, now his putative enemy as an officer of the Reich. The European war, particularly the bombing of art-filled Cassino, is evoked with good period detail. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Disturbance of the Inner Ear: A Novel by Joyce Hackett.
Dark, intense, and often very funny, this critically lauded debut novel tells a story of inherited trauma healed by erotic love in the lives of two unlikely soul mates: Isabel, a former cello prodigy and daughter of a Holocaust survivor, and Giulio, an Italian gigolo.
The Floating Book: A Novel of Venice, by Michelle R Lovric. Venice, 1468.
Venice, 1468. The beautiful yet heartless Sosia Simeon is making her mark on the city, driven by a dark compulsion to steal pleasure with men from all walks of life. Across the Grand Canal, Wendelin von Speyer has just arrived from Germany, bringing with him a cultural revolution: Gutenberg's movable type. Together with the young editor Bruno Uguccione and the seductive scribe Felice Feliciano, he starts the city's first printing press. Before long a love triangle develops between Sosia, Felice, and Bruno—who has become entranced by the verse of Catullus, the Roman erotic poet. But a far greater scandal erupts when Wendelin tempts fate by publishing the poet—and changes all of their lives forever. Sosia, the heartless sensualist; Felice, a man who loves the crevices of the alphabet the way other men love the crevices of women; Lussieta, whose anguish gives the story its soulful heart: these and many other characters make The Floating Book an unforgettable experience for lovers of romance, history, and the printed word.
The Food of Love by Anthony Capella
A new, absolutely delightful novel set in Rome. My husband and I both laughed all the way through this. It sort of reminds me of the light-hearted Peter Mayles Provence novels, although as different from Mayles as Rome is from the Luberon.
The Geometry of Love by Margaret Visser
is an excellent, poetic, lyrical, fact-filled introduction to why churches look the way they do. Absolutely fascinating,and you will feel so knowledgable every time you look at anything in a church, cathedral, basilica or chapel for evermore!
A House In Sicily by Daphne Phelps
a charming story of a 34 year old English woman in the year 1947. She has inherited the most beautiful house in Taormina. Going there to sell it,she instead falls in love with the house and the people of Taormina.
I, Claudius: From the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius, Born 10 B.C., Murdered and Deified A.D. 54 by Robert Graves.
Fabulous book about the emperors, murder, emperors, murder, emperors, murder, emperors, murder, emperors, murder, emperors, murder, gripping read you'd not want to be Caesar, set in Rome, Pompeii and Capri.
An Italian Affair by Laura Fraser.
When Laura Fraser's husband leaves her for his high school sweetheart, she takes off, on impulse, for Italy, hoping to leave some of her sadness behind. There, on the island of Ischia, she meets M., an aesthetics professor from Paris with an oversized love of life.
The Italians by Luigi Barzini
Review
The New Yorker Searching into every corner of Italian life and scrutinizing every cliché concerning it, from the charm of the people (an illusion, he maintains) to the consolations of la dolce vita (another one), Mr. Barzini has written an invaluable and astringent guidebook to his country.
Italy in Mind (edited by Alice Leccese Power)
Amazon.com
Italy has long been associated with love, images of Romeo serenading Juliet, and over-sexed locals pinching tourist flesh. But another Italian love affair has been going on for just as long, namely the writers who've been enchanted with the place for centuries. Alice Powers has collected an anthology of 41 authors spanning two centuries and all of Italy. There's Lord Byron on Venice, Herman Melville on Padua, Michael Ondaatje on Tuscany, Charles Dickens on Genoa, Richard Wilbur on Rome, Mark Twain on Naples, and Calvin Trillin on Sicily, for a feast of fine literature set in glorious surroundings.
A Kiss from Maddelena by Christopher Castenllani--a love story set in WWII Italy in the Abruzzi.
La Cucina by Lily Prior - fiction, but beautifully written - Sicily based, some Mafia involvement, and an ode to cooking.
Little World of Don Camillo by Giovanni Guareschi.
I first read Don Camilo when I was 13. The thing that I have always liked the most about this book is its central lesson: it is possible to fight about ideologies, but when the community is in danger, we must forget the fight and help our neighbors. We'll continue the fuss later. Episode after episode, Don Camilo, the local priest, and Peppone, the communist mayor, confront each other, sometimes in a serious and violent way. But every time, both men negotiate their way out of trouble. That is a related lesson: public enemies / private friends. When you finish the book, indeed, you get a feeling that these two enemies and rivals have developed, over the years and innumerable shared experiences, a friendship that is deeper than most people's relationships. I like very much the parts when, in the midst of a crisis, Peppone and Don Camilo run secret negotiations in the middle of the night. But if you think this is a "rosy" book, full of childish situations, you are wrong. The problems that both characters have to solve are often deep and painful. This is the best kind of educational book, because it does not really have a "moral". The intelligent reader -and most children are- gets his own conclusions in a funny and humorous way. Those are the lessons likely to stay for life. A lovely book.
The Lost Painting by Jonathan Harr (about the recent rediscovery of a lost Caravaggio)
"Jonathan Harr has taken the story of the lost painting, and woven from it a deeply moving narrative about history, art and taste--and about the greed, envy, covetousness and professional jealousy of people who fall prey to obsession. It is as perfect a work of narrative nonfiction as you could ever hope to read." --The Economist
Lucifer's Shadow by David Hewson
From Publishers Weekly
In this Venetian thriller, British author Hewson (A Season for the Dead) offers a tantalizing tale of intrigue, murder and sex. Two props propel the action: a concerto penned by a young Jewish woman in 1733 and performed once, anonymously, before its disappearance, and her unique violin. When in the present day this instrument is snatched from an obscure grave and the anonymous concerto is discovered in a long-forgotten hiding place, an innocent English scholar is drawn into an increasingly dangerous game of deception. Through the 18th-century letters and journals of a printer’s apprentice, the reader discovers the secret of the concerto, while Daniel Forster, in Venice to work for an ailing art collector, relives the mystery connected to the beautiful piece of music. The story set during the glory days of Vivaldi is more vivid, compelling and romantic than the contemporary one, as Daniel’s a bit of a cold fish. And if the various elements don’t quite add up to a satisfying whole, the intricate view of Venice with its palazzos and sewers, its concert halls and old Jewish ghetto is more than ample compensation.
Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers.
Miss Julia Garnet is a quiet and repressed schoolteacher whose life changes immeasurably when she goes on vacation to Venice, where she encounters art, beauty, love, and loss, and finds herself.
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.
It is the year 1327. Franciscans in an Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, but Brother William of Baskerville’s investigation is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths.
Night Letters, Robert Dessaix.
The New York Times Book Review, Patrick Farrell
This pocket-size book, dense with allusions to literary travelers like Dante, Casanova and Sterne, drove the Hollywood-bound Horse Whisperer from atop the Australian bestseller list. That's a testament to the popularity of its author, a book commentator on television and radio, and to the wry, chatty, surprisingly cheerful voice in which he discourses on heaven and hell, seduction and sex.... his central insight, if hardly original, is hard won and moving: that life may be lived best as a voyage, not to get somewhere or to accumulate experiences but to savor each moment.
North of Naples, South of Rome by Paolo Tullio...
From Library Journal
In his delightful memoir of life in the Comino Valley of Italy, Tullio, a native of Gallinaro, shares his most beloved memories of his time there as a young boy and his subsequent yearly summer visits. From his description of the festival of St. Gerard to a midnight picnic with a bonfire that burned three feet under melted snow, Tullio's amusing narrative of the people and countryside captures the quirks and nuances of small-town life. He also treats more serious moments in history?as when he describes his strong attachment to the cottage where his family hid from the Germans in World War II. Accompanied by pen-and-ink sketches by his wife, renowned watercolorist Susan Morley, these hilarious tales will leave readers longing for a journey to Italy. Recommended for public libraries.?Stephanie Papa, Baltimore Cty. Circuit Court Law Lib., Towson, MD
On Persephone's Island by Mary Taylor Simeti
From Publishers Weekly
An American married to a Sicilian professor and ancestral farm owner, Simeti with her family divides the year between Palermo and the countryside. In a beautifully written journal covering one year, she records with an artist's eye the rhythm of the seasons, the extremes of climate and contrasts between the lush coastal region, wheatlands and the mountainous, more barren interior of the island. With a useful historical perspective on Sicily's blend of civilizations, she also provides lively insights into the character of its people, their social and burial customs and festivals, some of them of Greek, Arab or Norman origin. The author appears to have retained an American independent spirit while immersing herself in an alien society and mastering the practical demands of rural existence. That her sensitivity to the charms of her adoptive land does not blind her to its shortcomings makes her a most reliable guide.
Old Calabria by Norman Douglas.
When Norman Douglas visited Calabria, Italy in the early years of the 20th century, its wild, secluded, and enigmatic country attracted little interest and few tourists. But Douglas never followed the already-traveled path, and so, we have this classic in which he wittily escorts us from the promontory of Gargano to the tip of Aspromonte, and through the influences of many invaders.
Pasquale's Nose: Idle Days in an Italian Town by Michael Rips.
Everywhere hailed for its quirkiness, its hilarity, its charm, Pasquale's Nose tells the story of a New York City lawyer who runs away to a small Etruscan village with his wife and new baby, and discovers a community of true eccentrics—warring bean growers, vanishing philosophers, a blind bootmaker, a porcupine hunter—among whom he feels unexpectedly at home.
Pompeii by Robert Harris
(great descriptions of Pompei, Herculanaeum and Naples and of the eruption of Vesuvius)
Renato's Luck by Jeff Shapiro
In this fable-like novel, Renato Tizzoni, who lives in the Tuscan town of Sant'Angelo d'Asso, is distressed when his best friend dies, the government announces it's going to build an intrusive a dam in his quiet town, and his daughter falls for a boy he can't stand. Life has lost all its luster, and he becomes depressed. Then a dream instructs him to go to the Pope for counsel, and as the townspeople find out where he's going they load him down with their own requests. Enlightened by the hard luck of others, Renato determines to try to solve his own problems.
Ripe for the Picking by Annie Hawes.
The book is a sequel to her earlier one, Extra Virgin. The setting is Liguria.
Rosemary and Bitter Oranges by Patrizia Chen.
From Booklist
This memoir of growing up along Tuscany's Mediterranean coast uncovers family secrets at an alarming rate. The author's well-to-do grandparents, though dear to her, have virtually no culinary aptitude, their daily food being inevitably white and bland (shades of M. F. K. Fisher's childhood). Only when Emilia, the family cook, takes the child in hand and teaches her the forbidden savor of spices and herbs does she learn to appreciate good food. Trips to America sharpen her appreciation for good cooking and uncover American cultural icons, such as television situation comedies. She also learns about her Sicilian relatives and the Mafia. She relates stories about her extended family's sometimes unusual relationships to food. Her grandfather regales her with ribald tales about his Sicilian cook, whose truly inimitable meatballs had a special, intimate tang. Mercifully, Chen's own recipes have more hygienic directions. Currently a writer about Italian cooking, Chen offers pasta pies and teacakes from her Livornese upbringing that rely on perfectly fresh and classically handled ingredients typical of Tuscany. Mark Knoblauch
Seasons in Basilicata : A Year in a Southern Italian Hill Village, by David Yeadon.
Yeadon more or less followed Levi's trail, and spent a year in the village Levi had written about 60 years earlier. A lovely book, sprinkled with the author's own drawings.
The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi by Jacquline Park
set in several Italian cities during the Renaissance, about the plight of a young Jewish woman and her family as they are kicked out of one town after another. Very well researched.
See Naples: A Memoir, by Douglas Allanbrook,
From Publishers Weekly
Forty years ago, Naples was as much a "moveable feast" to composer and harpsichordist Allanbrook as Paris was in the '20s and '30s to a host of writers and artists. His first experience of it was as a sergeant in WWII, his next as a two-year resident on a music fellowship during the early '50s. His recollections of both are sharp, graceful, filled with affection and vivid evocations. Of the first, he recalls the dangers and escapes from Monte Cassino to the Dolomites, and comrades lost. Of the second, he remembers his daily life amongst the Neapolitans, the places he lived, his landladies, the friends he made, the sensuous beauty and glittering history of the old city and, above all, his love affairs with two Italian women, one of whom he married. Allanbrook not only came to know Naples intimately but jaunted energetically to its surrounding castles, palaces and monuments, climbed mountains and bicycled giddily throughout the region. Visiting him were other Americans?musicians, writers, artists and critics, many of whom were to become famous, whose youthful creative juices were stimulated by this legendary place.
The Sixteen Pleasures: A Novel, by Robert Hellenga.
"I was twenty-nine years old when the Arno flooded its banks on Friday 4 November 1966. On Tuesday I decided to go to Italy, to offer my services as a humble book conservator, to save whatever could be saved, including myself." The Italians called them "Mud Angels," the young foreigners who came to Florence in 1966 to save the city's treasured art from the Arno's flooded banks. American volunteer Margot Harrington was one of them, finding her niche in the waterlogged library of a Carmelite convent. For within its walls she discovered a priceless Renaissance masterwork: a sensuous volume of sixteen erotic poems and drawings. Inspired to sample each of the ineffable sixteen pleasures, Margot embarks on the intrigue of a lifetime with a forbidden lover and the contraband volume--a sensual, life-altering journey of loss and rebirth in this exquisite novel of spiritual longing and earthly desire.
Stolen Figs: and other adventures in Calabria by Mark Rotella
Calabria is the toe of the boot that is Italy—a rugged peninsula where grapevines and fig and olive trees cling to the mountainsides during the scorching summers while the sea crashes against the cliffs on both coasts. Calabria is also a seedbed of Italian American culture; in North America, more people of Italian heritage trace their roots to Calabria than to almost any other region in Italy. Mark Rotella’s Stolen Figs is a marvelous evocation of Calabria and Calabrians, whose way of life is largely untouched by the commerce that has made Tuscany and Umbria into international tourist redoubts. A grandson of Calabrian immigrants, Rotella persuades his father to visit the region for the first time in thirty years; once there, he meets Giuseppe, a postcard photographer who becomes his guide to all things Calabrian. As they travel around the region, Giuseppe initiates Rotella—and the reader—into its secrets: how to make soppressata and ’nduja, where to find hidden chapels and grottoes, and, of course, how to steal a fig without actually committing a crime. Stolen Figs is a model travelogue—at once charming and wise, and full of the earthy and unpretentious sense of life that, now as ever, characterizes Calabria and its people.
The Stone Virgin by Barry Unsworth.
From Library Journal
Simon Raikes is given the task of restoring a 15th-century sculpture of the Madonna on a church in Venice. A frustrated artist himself, Simon is compelled to solve certain mysteries: Who was the sculptor? Why was the work suppressed for two centuries? How did it earn consecration? As he begins to painstakingly shear away corrosion, the statue apparently confronts him with visions and stirs his passions. His search for answers leads to a local sculptor's wife, with whom Simon falls in love, and eventually to a new mystery. The author handles a variety of narrative voices and the aura of suspense well. By disclosing the lives of those involved with this Madonna at three significant historical times, Unsworth allows subtle examination into the underlying theme, the attitudes men have toward women. Andrew Peters, Pioneer Multi-Cty. Lib., Norman, Okla.
The Story of San Michele by Axel Munthe.
A bestseller in a dozen languages and a favorite of readers for decades, The Story of San Michele is one of a remarkable life filled with fabulous experiences and ambitions. Axel Munthe was a fashionable physician in Paris who built one of the best-loved houses in the world, San Michele, on the Isle of Capri, on the site of the villa of the emperor Tiberius. Written with intelligence and verve, this autobiography tells tales of buried treasure in Italy, legendary creatures in Lapland, and the cold countesses and kindly whores of Naples—enough material, as one critic put it, “to furnish writers of short stories with plots for the rest of their lives.” “A frank and absorbing autobiography…packed with good stories, vivid scenes, and memorable portraits.” -- The Times [London] “Written in an imaginative style that is vigorous and impressive.” -- New York Times
Summer's Lease by John Mortimer
who wrote the Rumpole of the Bailey series. Busybody British woman with husband, kids, and outrageous father rents a Tuscan villa for the summer, replete with mystery and humor.
That Fine Italian Hand by Paul Hofmann.
From Library Journal
From the title, one might expect another of those travelogs or literate cookbooks that are often written about Italy, such as Barbara Grizzutti Harrison's Italian Days ( Weidenfeld, 1989). Instead, this book by the former New York Times bureau chief in Rome focuses mostly on the many social quirks and problems that are as much a part of Italian culture as pasta and espresso. Among the topics included are the Mafia, Italy's inclination toward anarchy, its overwhelming bureaucracy, and the ongoing prejudice of the affluent North toward the rural South. Though well researched, the book is written in a dispassionate, almost textbook-like style, with no personal slant or proposed solutions. Interesting and valuable from a sociological perspective, but recommended only for larger Italian studies collections.
- David Nudo, New York
Tuscan Soup by Lou Wakefield.
A little known novel, but good enough to be serialised on the BBC. Its strength is in the well drawn characters, but its description of Tuscan towns and their churches is sublime.
A Valley in Italy: The Many Seasons of a Villa in Umbria by Lisa St. Aubin de Teran.
Her descriptions of her quite eccentric family living in a roofless ruin while trying to restore the ancient villa make Frances' Mayes saga under the Tuscan sun sound like a piece of cake. We discovered (through an article about Lisa a couple of years ago in the NY Times) that the town she was writing about is actually Morra, although she doesn't give its real name in the book. We drove there from Arezzo once (over one of the most hair-raisingly curvaceous roads in Umbria) in hopes of spotting her palazzo, since we had been so fascinated by her story. But I think it must be far off the main road, since we couldn't see anything resembling it.
Vaporetto 13
The New York Times Book Review, Malachy Duffy
In telling the story of Jack (Squire), his obsession with Caterina, his fall from corporate grace and his redemption into a world where he is no longer blinded by the dancing cursor on a trading screen, Girardi suffuses his narrative with rich descriptions of the food, fashion, traditions and architecture of Venice. With this artful novel, he invites us to put aside our rational skepticism and enter a world where the past is still hauntingly present
When In Rome by Robert J. Hutchinson.
It was fun for light diversion. Much of the action takes place in a church which must really be San Clemente, although it's called San Tomasso in the book, and two of the main characters supposedly look exactly like the Etruscan couple on the Villa Giula sarcophagus.
White Smoke Over the Vatican by Don Sharkey
There is a great interesting small book about the story of the Vatican and the Pope's elections.
Topic Closed
It is nice to know what the cover looks like when looking for a book,( of course they often change the cover too.) I love having this list. I copied it and will highlight the ones I want to read. I hope there will be more additions to this list.
), I've gone back to my Italy bookshelf to see what hasn't already been mentioned.
