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Title: The Stone Boudoir: Travels through the Hidden Villages of Sicily by Teri Maggio, Theresa Maggio ISBN: 0-7382-0800-0 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: 06 May, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.23 (13 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A Little Overly Sentimental but Still Very Good
Comment: I'm going to be taking a long holiday through all of Sicily this summer, so I've been reading a lot of books about it. I found Theresa Maggio's THE STONE BOUDOIR to be a far superior book to Francine Prose's SICILIAN ODYSSEY, though THE STONE BOUDOIR is a bit sentimental and Maggio does have a tendency to "gush." For example, she writes of buildings made of "creamy yellow sandstone, or black lava, or dense blue stones, or pink clay rocks." I didn't mind this sentimentality, though. In fact, I rather enjoyed it because one could see how very sincere Maggio is about her love for the land of her ancestors.
Maggio begins her book by telling us that she is of Sicilian heritage herself...her paternal grandparents were from Santa Margherita Belice, though they eventually emigrated to the US and never returned to Sicily. Maggio, though, does visit Santa Margherita.
Maggio's love for Sicily comes through in every line of her book and she seems to have visited the island far more times than has Prose. While Prose seemed to want to "pigeon hole" Sicily and Sicilians, Maggio doesn't make this mistake. She takes us right to the "old" Sicily. She really seems to eschew anything modern, which gives her book a sort of timeless, eternal quality that I really liked. It seemed like she was writing about the Sicily that always was and always will be. Her descriptions of the Madonie Mountains were especially breathtaking and made me want to be in Sicily that very minute.
One of the best parts of the book details Maggio's visit to the ancient village of Sperlinga, where she spent the night in a stone house, i.e., a cave (it is this cave that gave the book its title), but a very modern one. Unlike Prose, Maggio doesn't find the interior of Sicily "unfriendly." She finds it just as friendly as the coastal towns, something I've found to be true on previous visits to Sicily, myself.
The chapters in THE STONE BOUDOIR are quite episodic and read like short stories, although this is a non-fiction book and not a work of fiction. Maggio's writing is good, but, as I said earlier, she does have a tendency to be overly sentimental and lyrical about Sicily, but then, who, in their right mind, wouldn't be? Sicily is a land rich in myth, culture and natural beauty. If I have any criticism about this book at all, it's the fact that Maggio seems to want to over-simplify a very complicated land with a very complex history. That, however, is just a quibble.
Recommended to anyone who has a great love for Sicily, I think this book should be read, not as travelogue, but more as a "love letter" to the land of one's ancestors.
Rating: 1
Summary: Category:Fiction
Comment: I am an Italian-American who has visited and enjoyed Italy many times over the last five years. I read this book before I visited Sicily in November 2003. The author and I must have visited different islands. This author and many other travel writers view their subject through rose-colored glasses. The truth, the island was more congested with traffic than Tokyo. Palermo was more grafitt-ridden than Manhattan in the 1970's. A large portion of the population, especially the men, combined arrogance, laziness and stupidity in that order.
If you decide to travel to Sicily, do a guided tour like Lawrence Durrell in "Sicilian Carousel"
Rating: 4
Summary: Evocative descriptions of life in rural Sicily
Comment: In her book The Stone Boudoir, Theresa Maggio shares with the reader, descriptions of rural culture in the mountain villages and towns on the island of Sicily. Having traveled to Sicily initialy to explore the birthplace of her grandparents while in college in 1973, she returned again and again, at times living with Sicilian friends and absorbing theirs and others stories and experiences.
One of the most striking aspects of this book is to realize that this rural culture exists litttle changed over the centuries, in spite of it's proximity to modern Italian/European culture. The description of the celebration of the Feast of Saint Agatha, celebrated every year in Catania is fascinating and one of the high points in this collection of essays/stories.
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Title: On Persephone's Island : A Sicilian Journal by Mary Taylor Simeti ISBN: 0679764143 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 26 September, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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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: 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: 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: Sicilian Odyssey (National Geographic Directions) by Francine Prose ISBN: 0792265351 Publisher: National Geographic Pub. Date: 01 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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