Reading Matters

'A Thousand Days in Venice: An Unexpected Romance' by Marlena de Blasi

 

Nonfiction - paperback; Ballentine Books; 272 pages; 2002.

I have just discovered that the medication I am currently taking for a chest infection is the same medication given to people with Anthrax, so this might partly explain the snarky review which is to follow. Then again it might not.

A Thousand Days in Venice is one of those lovely-looking personal travel memoirs that promises everything and delivers not very much at all.

There's no doubt that it is well written: the prose is clear, lucid and free from too much 'waffle' and de Blasi definitely knows how to write about food in a wonderfully evocative way.

But the story -- how can I say this without sounding too mean? -- is woefully sappy and overly sentimental, which is fine if you like those things, but terrible if you don't.

Essentially it's about de Blasi's whirlwind 'romance' with an Italian whom she met on a work-related trip to Venice. This man had spied her before on a previous trip, had fallen in love with her profile, and when he spotted her again on her second trip he kept following her around like a lovelorn puppy. Apparantly de Blasi has never heard of the term 'stalker' before.

Strangely enough, when alarm bells should have been ringing, de Blasi, a middle-aged American with a successful career and two grown-up children of her own, decides to give up her entire life for this man -- a banker -- she barely knows. The two of them don't even share a common language and de Blasi hasn't even seen Fernando's house before she's already sold hers and is winging her way to Venice to be with him.

Of course, things don't pan out as de Blasi had hoped (probably because the woman doesn't seem to have a realistic bone in her body) and there are ructions in the relationship from woe to go. But somehow the marriage survives even when Fernando throws in his job because he wants to leave Venice to live elsewhere!

All in all, a fairly cloying memoir that I really only perservered with because I enjoyed the references to particular places in Venice that I've seen or visited. It's a pretty safe bet that I won't be tracking down her second volume -- A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure -- unless my Anthrax medication turns me decidedly loopy!

'Second Time Around' by Mary Higgins Clark

Fiction - paperback; Pocket Books; 352 pages; 2004.

Quite frankly, unless you're a real Mary Higgins Clark fan or you like your thrillers a little on the dull side, then give this book a wide berth.

There's the bones of a good story there and the author certainly knows how to move the plot forward, but there's little flesh to keep even the most unsophisticated reader interested. I found it too formulaic, too staged and, because of that, too dry.

The best bit is the ending (and not just because I was glad to be rid of the blasted book), because it has a slight unexpected twist to it. But, on the whole, this novel reads more like a screenplay than an inspired piece of creative fiction. Disappointing.

'The Mammy' by Brendan O'Connell

Fiction - paperback; The O'Brien Press; 174 pages; 1994.

The Mammy is Irish comedian Brendan O'Connell's first book. It's a very simple tale about a widow struggling to raise seven children on Dublin's north side in the late 1960s. Each chapter is essentially a short story centred on the individual characters that make up Agnes Browne's family. There are funny little episodes with not-so-funny punchlines, and the language, studded with 'Dublin-speak', is very stripped back to the point of being boring.

Aside from these faults, it is a lighthearted story — punctuated with pathos — about a family on the wrong side of the tracks, the strength of friendship in trying times, and the essential goodness of people in a more naive era. Apparently the book has been made into a film starring Angelica Houston, and while I haven't seen it, I think it would probably be more entertaining than the novel.