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Title: A Thousand Days in Venice: An Unexpected Romance (Ballantine Reader's Circle) by Marlena De Blasi ISBN: 0-345-45764-1 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 03 June, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.32 (34 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Delightful
Comment: This is a light, but thought-provoking book about not giving up on love, taking chances, and compromising without resentment. It is a delightful read, made even more pleasing because it is autobiographical. Would that more of us had this kind of courage and trust in ourselves and those we fall in love with.
Rating: 3
Summary: Venice . . . a Romantic Springboard to a New Life
Comment: Gourmet food writer, gourmand extraordinaire and makeshift interior decorator, Marlena De Blasi, throws caution to the wind when she leaves her home base in America to marry a man she barely knows from Venice. Is she crazy or merely sensationally romantic?
If I were to analyze la bella dona, Marlena, by her writing alone, I would submit that indeed she is a romantic---each of the moments she describes on the island of Lido and Venice proper, wax with almost too much poetry. In spite of this tendency for long windedness, Marlena infuses her little book with such infectious optimism for the future that the reader automatically forgives her indulgences.
After all, it is she, not us, taking the big chance, exchanging her old life for something completely foreign. And she does this, not as a young ingenue in her 20s or early 30s but as a mature woman with grown children. Each of her decisions and contemplations is most intricately explored; questions that arise in any mature mind are handled with an infinite and loving look at a future that isn't as long as it seemed when one was much younger. Brava, Marlena, for giving the spark of love a chance to grow into a flame and to express your anxieties with such honesty.
The first part of Marlena's story ignites that flame within the reader's heart; the details of the mystery Venetian steadfastly wooing the woman of his dreams based on just a glimpse of her profile emulates the great romances. The author's technique of flashing back to her first visit to Venice does not make its thematic point as quickly as one would wish, and so seems to muddy the pace of the actual tale of courtship and marriage. However, this, too does not mar the overall tapestry that De Blasi ultimately crafts.
In the second half of the book. De Blasi deals with her assimilation into the Italian mindset--a transition she makes totally possible through her use of interior design and her love of good food--wonderful recipes of some of the key meals mentioned in the text are thoughtfully provided at the end of the book. The couples' decision to chuck their newly converted Lido apartment for a life of helping others create their own dream environment in Tuscany and Umbria seems perfectly in tune with the book's emphasis on shunning the routine and keeping life a continuum of surprise. I hope that Marlena will follow this book up with a tale of her new adventures as the couple molts into their new lifestyle.
Recommended to all those who love romance and the thought of living in a foreign land.
Rating: 4
Summary: Reality
Comment: I will give credit to Marlena DeBlasi for writing a rather enchanting tale of midlife rejuvenation. She leaves the unhappy "old" new world, and finds romance, love and joy in the "new" old world. Ms. DeBlasi tells her story with considerable pananche: Marlena, the smells, sights and oddities of the city are very much alive. Fernando less so.
My concern is that Ms.DeBlasi seems not to understand that ones history cannot be abandoned. Thomas Mann, in another story about Venice, brilliantly describes the death of a respected writer who rejects his past in exchange for Venetian Eros. Pirandello also comes to mind. In his plays, his characters alter the reality of the past; "reality" is dissociated from "what was", and "what is" becomes what the characters want to behold. In both "Death in Venice" and "Henry IV" outcomes are not good. "A Thousand Days in Venice" hopefully will be the first volume of a trilogy. The second will be an honest appraisal and coming to terms with the past, and the third a remarkable synthesis.
I am taking this little book seriously. Perhaps I am reading too much into it, but I think it represents more than a sassy middle age romance, or a nice story like "Under the Tuscan Sun". Ms. DeBlasi has begun to think about her past, although I do not believe that she has fully come to terms with it. Her "rebirth" is also significant. I am not sure whether it is an escape, and as with the Pirandello characters, a reality based on the perceptions one wants to have, or is it the "real thing". Only Ms.DeBlasi knows that.
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Title: An Italian Affair by Laura Fraser ISBN: 0375724850 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 07 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Venetian Stories by Jane Turner Rylands ISBN: 0375422323 Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 06 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: Extra Virgin: A Young Woman Discovers the Italian Riviera, Where Every Month Is Enchanted by Annie Hawes ISBN: 0060958111 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 02 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Pasquale's Nose: Idle Days in an Italian Town by Michael Rips ISBN: 0316748641 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: April, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Regional Foods of Northern Italy: Recipes and Remembrances by Marlena De Blasi ISBN: 0761512314 Publisher: Prima Lifestyles Pub. Date: 24 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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