John Berendt
The City of Falling Angels (2005)
Author: John Berendt
Genre: Nonfiction (Travel)
Book Summary:
Three days before John Berendt moves to Venice, the famous Fenice Opera House burns down. Berendt arrives in a city swarming with gossip and conspiracy theories about the fire: government negligence, contractor greed, Mafia. While he follows the investigation into the fire, Berendt describes tangential scandals (like the affair of Ezra Pound’s papers and the corruption involved in other Venetian restoration projects) and characters (like the daring surrealist performance artist and the nosy Venetian count), leading the reader through a winding history of Venice, Venetians, and expatriates.
Geographical Setting: Venice, Italy
Time Period: present (late 1990s to early 2000s)
Appeal Characteristics:
The major appeal of this book is the sense of present-day Venice evoked by Berendt: this is definitely not a book that will help you navigate from the train station to St. Mark's; instead, Berendt describes the physical city in great detail, focusing on restoration projects and historical details. Although not primarily a historical book, other subjects covered that might appeal to readers are literary history (specifically Henry James and Ezra Pound) and art history (especially modern art like the Peggy Guggenheim collection). Berendt spends an equal amount of time on the people of Venice, describing major and minor scandals, the colorful characters that make up the city, going beyond what tourists see. In this way, the characterization is very strong; indeed, Venice itself is the strongest character in the book. It does not follow a traditional story arc, but weaves together vignettes about the city, set off (ha!) by the Fenice fire. There are a lot of characters, though, and this can be hard to keep track of - Berendt kindly provides a glossary of characters in addition to his glossary of Italian words and places. The storytelling is fast-paced and engaging, moving from one story to the next as Berendt meets people on the street.
Read-alikes: Readers interested in seeing more of Venice should try Francesco da Mosto's illustrated Francesco's Venice (2005), in which da Mosto, who appears in Berendt's book, gives a colorful guided history of the city; and Mary McCarthy's Venice Observed (1963), which, like Berendt, evokes a city with which Americans fall in love. Another book about urban restoration, Anthony Max Tung’s Preserving the World’s Great Cities: The Destruction and Renewal of the Historic Metropolis (2001), features Venice and will appeal to readers strictly interested in the subject of The City of Falling Angels. More than a traditional travel narrative, The City of Falling Angels gives a strong sense of Venice as a place, including its sights and people. A few other books that give a detailed sense of Italy as a place are Tobias Jones’s The Dark Heart of Italy: An Incisive Portrait of Europe’s Most Beautiful, Most Disconcerting Country (2004), which covers all of Italy and focuses on political/bureaucratic characters; Mark Rotella’s Stolen Figs and Other Adventures in Calabria (2003), which gives the southern Italian city the same treatment that Berendt gives Venice; and Frances Mayes's less juicy Under the Tuscan Sun, which evokes a much more leisurely-paced Italy, focusing on the medieval city of Cortona and Mayes’s home renovations there. If the strong sense of place is the most appealing element of the book, try Berendt’s earlier bestseller, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1994), which does for Savannah what The City of Falling Angels does for Venice. Other strong place-narratives outside of Italy include Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods (1998), about the Appalachian Trail; and Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence, about, well, Provence. Finally, readers interested in reading fictional accounts of Venice might try Thomas Mann's classic Death in Venice (1928), which portrays a dark, decaying city and a doomed hero; and Donna Leon’s series of detective fiction set in the city. The first, Death at La Fenice (2004), features the doomed opera house of Berendt’s book.
Red Flags: none.
|top|
|
