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Title: On Persephone's Island : A Sicilian Journal by MARY TAYLOR SIMETI ISBN: 0-679-76414-3 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 26 September, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (10 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A delightful read
Comment: Picked this book because of its previous rating and read it prior to visiting Sicily. I found the book a delightful read and Simeti's images to accurately describe the Sicily we saw four weeks after finishing the book. She describes well a beautiful and complex island as enjoyable to visit as her book is to read.
Rating: 4
Summary: Engaging account and analysis of Sicily in transition
Comment: Although it sometimes seemed padded, I enjoyed Mary Taylor Simeti's journal of the changing seasons and their festivals in northwestern Sicily (Palermo and her husband's ancestral estate southwest of the city) in 1992-93. In the year covered by the book she also makes or recalls visits to a number of other sites, mostly in western Sicily, and draws on many earlier accounts of how festivals were celebrated in ancient Magna Grecia and in 18th and 19th century Sicily.
Although preoccupied with ancient Greek celebrations, particularly their botanical foci, and with the disappearances and revivals of Sicilian folk culture, Simeti's account does not ignore the Mafia. 1992 was the year in which General dalla Chiesa and his young wife wereassassinated. Outrage at that marked the beginning of public condemnation of the Mafia and the violence that culminated in the 1996 assassinations of the magistrates investigating the Mafia was escalating. (And 1993 was the year that a lava flow from Mt. Etna was diverted by dynamite.)
Focusing on Demeter and Persephone has a clear feminist agenda. Simeti expresses eloquently her ambivalence as an expatriate American (of 20 years standing at the time), alternately enchanted and infuriated by Sicilian ways. I was particularly struck by the more widespread (than Sicily) resentment at "living in a world where rite and tradition are becoming ever more a private affair that has fallen squarely into the woman's lap" (66-- I know that ancestor worship is similarly being increasingly dumped on wives in Taiwan, for another instance).
The characters are not as clear as those in _Out of Africa_ or _Cross Creek_, but in writing engagingly about residence in a land that is strange to the author, Simeti deserves a place on the shelf with those much-loved classics.
Rating: 1
Summary: ON THE ISLAND OF DRECK
Comment: It irks me that Mary Taylor Simeti is in possession of any of my money! That any publisher found ON PERSEPHONE'S ISLAND worthy of print astounds me! Be warned, you get exactly what is promised, a journal! Simeti's is a dry account, devoid of humor, insight and passion and is written with a lofty phraseology: a deadly combination that had better not be contagious! To be honest, I found the book so dull I was unable to read it straight through, so after eighty pages, I began skiping around in search of entertainment, since there is no story. I found none!
If you're searching for an escape to another place, a glimpse into another life or culture, or just plain fun, look elsewhere! You will find none of the above here! Half a star-because the cover is very nice, if misleading!
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Title: The Leopard by Guiseppe Di Lampedusa ISBN: 0679731210 Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 23 July, 1991 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Stone Boudoir: Travels through the Hidden Villages of Sicily by Teri Maggio, Theresa Maggio ISBN: 0738208000 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: 06 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb ISBN: 0375704582 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 22 February, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: About Sicily: Travellers in an Ancient Island by David D. Hume ISBN: 1880158248 Publisher: J N Townsend Pub Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Pomp And Sustenance : Twenty Five Centuries Of Sicilian Food by Mary Simeti Taylor ISBN: 0880016108 Publisher: Ecco Pub. Date: 01 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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