The Lady in the Palazzo: At Home in Umbria @ richardeward.com

The Lady in the Palazzo: At Home in Umbria
by Marlena de Blasi
from Algonquin Books

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0

• Minority Opinion
  I bought this book last month (October 2008), while on my 5th visit to Orvieto. I was hoping for an insightful portrait of Orvieto, a place for which I have enormous regard. Unfortunately, this book is primarily about Ms. De Blasi, not about Orvieto. I find her writing style to be self-consciously florid, almost equivalent to "reading" a Thomas Kinkade painting. I also found somewhat disconcerting her assumption that the reader (I!) should know of her past, i.e., that I should have read her previous books.... more info

• Mediocre writing, but a solid story about Umbria nontheless
  When I travel, I enjoy reading novels about the place I'm going to - it adds an extra dimension to all of the new sights and cities. To this end The Lady in the Palazzo was a good book to read about Umbria, with lots of fun anecdotes about the towns and culture of the region. However the writing is run-of-the-mill and at times awkward. For example, in the middle of the book two chapters are devoted to the back stories of the novel's supporting characters. While flashbacks like this can be an interesting... more info

• The Lady in the Palazzo: At Home in Umbria
  A fabulously well written story of their continuing adventures of living in Italy. Her observations of the idiocyncracies of the villages of Tuscany and Umbria are close to the mark and full of humor and "stranger in a strange land" frustration and successes.It is as lovely as her first book about Venice and meeting Fernando, and the recipes are the next thing I will want to try. Marlena gets better and better.

• disappointed
  I read 1000 Days in Tuscany and found it lovely. This, I thought, was a bore. It felt as though she was just fulfilling the obligation of a trilogy and had to come up with something. Yes, her writing is gorgeous, but she writes of the mundane..no matter it is Umbria.

Similar Products: