A Thousand Days in Venice

Rating:
Summary: I really can't understand people who don't love this book!
Review: This is the best memoir I've read in years, and I'm a pretty harsh critic. I loved De Blasi's style, as well as her willingness to uncover many of her emotional vulnerabilities during the course of the book.

I'm not going to say it's perfect. There were sentences I had to read twice every now and then--clunky sentences--and sometimes there was a bit of repetition. Still, just like Venice itself with all her imperfections, the sum total of all the book's parts make it a beautiful read. (Make that a serenissima read!)

It's somehow terribly encouraging to know there are still women like Marlena De Blasi out there. She had the courage to envision a new life for herself and then go for it. I found this highly inspirational. That this romance is set in Venice only makes it all the more appealing.

Additionally, I found it compelling that she doesn't paint her relationship with her new Italian husband to be 100% rosy.

I would recommend this whole-heartedly to any Italo-philes and people who themselves may be experiencing a "mid-life change of plans."

Excuse me while I go buy all her other books.

Rating:
Summary: Enchanting Yet Realistic
Review: Though the basis seemed initially farfetched, I fell in love with this book. If she wouldn't have expressed her frustration about the reality of submersing herself in a foreign land and getting to really know the person she found herself having unexplainable feelings for, the book really would have seemed too much like a fairytale. She adds just enough of reality to this to keep it passionate and believable. The way Marlene communicates gives hope to the cynical and makes a true romantic justified in his/her beliefs.

Rating:
Summary: Love is (Venetian) Blind
Review: Author de Blasi portrays herself as the woman that Italian banker Fernando falls passionately in love with at first sight, the woman that everyone in Venice seems to be enchanted with, the American that complete strangers all over Italy are charmed by. This seems like a pretty risky move for a writer, and not quite believable, but somehow she pulls it off.

By concentrating on the attractions and food of Venice, and by sticking to the unfolding of an unlikely love affair, de Blasi makes A Thousand Days in Venice an enjoyable story. It isn't very long before you stop thinking about how eccentric de Blasi must be in real life and just lose yourself in the romance of Venice.

There was just enough conflict here to keep A Thousand Days from being a soppy travelogue. All of de Blasi's friends were convinced that she was making a dreadful mistake by giving up her house and job in Saint Louis (as she insists on spelling it) and moving to Venice to marry a man she had met only months before. Then as she gets to know Fernando better, she finds he has certain ideas about how she should dress, conduct herself, and speak. Will the romance survive the doubts and the clash of cultures?

Of course it does, and after the couple exhausts Venice with their exuberance, they move on to Tuscany to start a new life, and a new book.

Rating:
Summary: A cookbook disguised as a romance
Review: I very much enjoyed this story of accidental romance, but by far the biggest benefit of owning this book has been the recipes in the back: we have cooked most of them and added each new dish to our list of favorites.

Rating:
Summary: Lovely romance
Review: In a similar vein as "Under the Tuscan Sun" but briefer and a bit darker.

Does make you want to fly to someplace exotic to meet your own "stranger".