Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrick Christian Delius

I was delighted to win a copy of this book in Brighton Blogger's Italy in Reading Challenge last year. I'm now reviewing for her 2012 Reading Challenge. Most of my reviews for that challenge will be over on Crafty Green Poet with the theme of nature and environment. This book doesn't fit that theme so I'm reviewing it here.


Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman is a beautiful meditation on loneliness, innocence and loss in Rome during the Second World War. The narrative follows the thoughts of a young, pregnant German woman as she walks from her home to a church where she is going to a musical recital. Her husband is with the German army in Tunis and she thinks about him and their marriage as well as about her position in Rome as a foreigner during wartime.


I felt that the book was a perfect compliment to Elsa Morante's History. That book is much longer (around 700 pages to Portrait's 125) and has many more characters! However both focus on a woman who is quite innocent of world affairs and sees the war very much in terms of how it affects her life.


Portrait is in the form of one long sentence. This sometimes puzzled me as I could see many points in the narrative where full stops would have been useful. It also really made me wonder what the original German text looked like, given that in many contexts in German the verbs go at the end of a sentence.....


Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius translated by Jamie Bulloch, published by Peirene Press

As ever, coloured text contains hyperlinks that take you to other websites where you can find out more.

Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers

Julia Garnet feels totally at a loss when her friend and flatmate Harriet dies. Feeling she needs a change in her life, she moves to Venice, where she discovers art, new friends and ideas and is encouraged to throw off a lifetime of caution. She becomes very interested in the Apocryphal story of Tobias, a version of which is woven through the narrative of the novel.

I really enjoyed the descriptions of Venice and the art. I also enjoyed how Julia's character developed throughout the novel. I wasn't so keen on the characters Toby and Sarah who were parallels to the characters in the story of Tobias. That just felt a bit contrived to me, though the original story was fascinating.

I bought this book in a second hand shop when I was visiting my parents and decided I would read it immediately and add it to my books for the Italy in Books Reading Challenge.


Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers published by Harper Perennial.

Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel

Galileo's Daughter is an account of the close relationship between the famous scientist and his daughter, who was a nun. The book incorporates many of Marie Celeste's letters to her father and outlines how she supported his life and work from her isolated situation in the convent. At the same time the book looks at Galileo's major scientific achievements and his relationship with the Catholic Church.

Galileo was interrogated by the Inquisition for daring to agree with Copernicus' earlier hypothesis that the earth moved round the sun. The book in which he supported Copernicus had been discussed by prominent church men and had been passed by them for publication pending a few alterations. However, when the Pope found himself struggling politically he realised he had to be seen to take a hardline against any potential heretics and suddenly Galileo was being interrogated! For the early part of the time that he was imprisoned after his interrogations, Galileo was under house arrest in the homes of his supporters and used this time to write a lot more and to hold scientific discussions. Obviously the Pope didn't like that and so he was banished to house arrest in his own home, which was isolated from anywhere apart from the convent where his daughter lived. Sadly Marie Celeste died soon after Galileo was imprisoned in his own home so their closeness on that occasion didn't last long. Galileo, despite suffering from poor health for most of his life and living in times when the plague regularly swept across Italy, lived to be 77.

This is a book full of fascinating insights into Galileo's scientific achievements, into his relationship with his daughter and into everyday life in 16th and 17th Century Italy.

Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel, published by Fourth Estate

for the Italy in Books Reading Challenge

Roma by Steven Saylor

I was delighted to win a copy of Roma in the Italy in Books Reading Challenge. It's a big book (650 pages) and covers 1000 years in the history of Ancient Rome, following the fortunes of the Pinarius family.


I really like the concept of this novel, using one family as an eye on history, showing the reader key points through the lives of that family.


In the first few chapters the concept worked really well - I enjoyed the weaving of myth alongside reconstruction of the very early inhabitants of the very early settlement that became the powerful city of Rome. I was engaged in the stories and interested in the characters. The story moved along at a good pace.


Later chapters though I felt rushed through a lot of very important events. In a sense this probably reflects how the pace of life has become more frenetic but we come to time periods where historical facts are much more well known and I wanted more depth.


Crafty Green Boyfriend reads mostly epic SF/Fantasy series of alternative realities. I usually find even the idea overwhelming but in this instance I found that was what I wanted! I felt that several of the later chapters of this novel would expand to make excellent novels in their own right.


And actually in a sense its not a criticism of a book to say you wanted more, is it? I can definitely recommend this as a very readable overview of the early history of Rome.




Roma by Steven Saylor, published by Corsair.

For Italy in Books

The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici

The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici by Christopher Hibbert is a long, detailed look into the Medici family, the dynasty that had such a profound effect on the Italian city of Florence during the Renaissance.

The book follows the ups and downs of the family from the early 1430s with the rise of the near legendary Cosimo de'Medici until the end of the family line in 1737. The loves, habits and politics of each of the Medici are outlined in dense prose. the book has been described as 'thoroughly readable' by Antonia Fraser, herself a well known historical writer, but I found it heavy and hard going. In fact I felt, by presenting so much historical fact in such a dense manner, the book became boring and sometimes confusing, where background was only sketched in and too many characters were introduced at once.

I suspect this is a book that would be most appreciated by people who already know a lot about Renaissance Florence and who want a reference book about the Medici.


The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici by Christopher Hibbert, published by Penguin


reviewed for Italy in Books.

History by Elsa Morante

This is a huge (over 700 pages), magnificent novel set in Italy immediately before, during and immediately after the Second World War. When I picked it up I thought it might be hard going but it isn't. Admittedly there are scenes of great hardship and suffering and some sections are difficult to read. However mostly it is driven by the irrepresible optimism and liveliness of the central character Useppe, who is born near the beginning of the book and is still a child by the end of the book. His widowed mother Ida is a teacher, she is very timid and ignorant of world events. I wasn't convinced by Ida as a character, feeling that a teacher would have been unusual to have been quite so scared of the world, but teaching is possibly one of the few professions a woman in 1940s Italy could have had, and her ignorance was central to the book's effect. The book explores Italian history of the period very well but its focus is definitely on the lives of ordinary people who are living their lives, often in ignorance about much of the politics that was going on behind the scenes.

Ida and Useppe are bombed out of their original home, find a space in a crowded shelter then move through a succession of rooms. Useppe makes friends wherever he goes, though it is often difficult for him to find people to make friends with and his friends often disappear from his life without warning (which ultimately wears him down). He also finds two dogs, a cat, some rabbits and some canaries at various points along the way. Each of these animals is beautifully portrayed. Bella the dog is the most engaging fictional dog I've ever read about, she is a real friend for Useppe and a fully drawn character.


Useppe is also very much in tune with nature. There are several wonderful scenes where he visits favourite places to sit in trees and listen to the birds. He lives his life to the full and enjoys everything there is to enjoy around him.


Meanwhile history marches on, passing us all by, in our small lives, whether we choose to hide away from the world or embrace it.


History by Elsa Morante, translated from Italian by William Weaver

published in Italy in 1972, first published in the UK 2001 by Penguin


For Italy in Books

Sul Po by Mario Bonfantini

This is a series of five stories set around the River Po. Most of them split themselves into descriptions (of for example the contrast between the river as it flows through towns and cities and as it flows through the countryside) and the story itself. I personally preferred the descriptive passages, but that probably has a lot to do with the fact that I found these passages easier to read. The Italian in these stories is quite colloquial in places! I actually find it quite difficult also to do a longer review of these stories, as I read them in between the novels I was reading and my memory has faded a wee bit, this happens more quickly when I've read something in a foreign language for some reason!


I've not been able to find out whether these stories have been translated into English, but they're definitely worth reading if you read Italian (specially if your Italian is better than mine!).



Sul Po by Mario Bonfantini published by Einaudi, 1975


For Italy in Books

The Passion by Jeanette Winterson

This is Jeanette Winterson at her best. I've read most of her novels and this is one of my favourites. The story follows Henri, a French peasant who hero worships Napoleon. He is torn between his pride in serving Napoleon his meals as the army travels Europe and his feelings of not belonging in the army.

The second strand of the novel follows Villanelle, a young Venetian, born with webbed feet (as myth suggests all Venetian fishermen are). She dresses as a boy to work in the Casino, where she meets a mysterious married woman, who becomes her lover for a while while her husband is away.

Eventually the two narratives merge - everything is connected.

The novel is beautifully written. The language is gorgeous, but also concise, there's barely a word out of place. There are wonderful touches of surrealism, as in the shapeshifting Venice of everchanging waterways and the fishermen's webbed feet. It feels like an exagerrated picture of Venice as it really is, and the reader can almost accept it as being real, just as we can almost accept as real the alternative version of history we're presented with.

Wonderful book.

The Passion by Jeanette Winterson, published by Penguin

For the LGBT Reading Challenge and the Italy in Books Reading Challenge

The Luxury of Exile by Louis Buss

Claude Wooldridge is an antiques dealer and second hand bookshop owner with an obsession with Byron and an impending midlife crisis. When he finds what may be letters leading him to Byron's memoirs he thinks this may be something that will bring meaning left to his life. His profession means that he is acutely aware that the memoirs (and indeed the letter leading him to them) may be a fake and increasingly he is becoming aware that his whole life may be fake. So he rushes off to Naples and buys the old mansion that Byron is reputed to have lived in, where he can uncover the truth.

The part of the novel set in the UK is entertaining, Wooldridge is a colourful and not entirely likeable character and his dysfunctional family and professional life is described in an amusing and insightful manner. Secrets abound, which are revealed gradually through the narrative. Great use is made of the weather to accent mood (though this is perhaps overdone in one scene, where an argument is counterpointed by an ever increasing thunderstorm that becomes rather melodramatic).

However, once action moves to Naples, the book totally deteriorated for me. Rather than Italy acting as a backdrop for adventure, discovery and closure it is a setting for depressing introspection and self involved misery.

The Luxury of Exile by Louis Buss published by Random House

for the Italy in Books reading challenge

Titian - The Last Days by Mark Hudson

This book is a wonderful, though sometimes slightly confused, mix of travelogue, biography, art history and general history. The subtitle The Last Days is entirely misleading as it looks at most of Titian's life and a large proportion of his paintings and puts his work in context with the other developments in Venetial art at the time.

Large amounts of the narrative is spent detailing Titian's paintings, and where these paintings are shown in the colour plates in the centre of the book this is wonderful reading. I totally enjoyed discovering the depths to paintings that were being discribed to me as well as being available in front of my eyes. Some of the described paintings weren't available in the book though and these long descriptions became slightly tiresome as I wanted to have them in front of me, I'm not sure that the author should be expecting all readers to have a good visual memory for large numbers of paintings!

The book also went into a lot of detail about Titian's methods of working and how he had access to a large number of styles of painting, not to mention his assistants! I found it fascinating that often he would quiet blatantly adapt paintings by other artists, add his own background, paint the head of his model (or patron) onto the existing body and hey presto! another masterpiece! Not to mention the studio copies (mostly carried out by his assistants) of his own works.

There is also a lot of information about the art scene in Venice in the 1500s, the history of the times and the epidemics that periodically swept the city, including the 1576 plague which is believed to have killed Titian.

Added to all this, are a lot of discussions about eroticism in art. Many paintings of the period (including several by Titian himself) used naked people in suggestive poses, that were made respectable by the addition of a mythological tale. Titian seems to have been the first artist to have drawn a naked woman without this justification, and this painting The Venus of Urbino scandalised many people (Mark Twain reportedly described it as 'the obscenest picture the world possesses') while what we see is a beautiful young woman in a pose that is no more suggestive than the poses of many nymphs in many mythological paintings.

Interspered in all this are accounts of the author's travels round Venice in search of Titian's last home and round various art galleries and religious buildings in search of the artists paintings.

It's a totally fascinating book and a must read for anyone interested in art history or in the process of how artists work.

Titian - the Last Days by Mark Hudson, published by Bloomsbury

for Italy in Books

La Luna e i falo Cesare Pavese

Anguilla the narrator of La Luna e i Falo (which translates as The Moon and the Bonfires) had grown up in a village in the Langhe area of Italy, but after his military service in Genoa had had to flee to the USA as he was an opponent of the fascist regime and it was no longer safe for him to remain. This novel is the story of his return to the Italy he had grown up in. He finds everything is the same and everything has changed. The book is a little confusing as it moves between the present in Italy and the past both in Italy and the USA. It's a beautifully written book, which gives the reader plenty to think about in terms of identity and belonging, home and loss.


The scene that stands out for me is where Anguilla is stranded in the desert in the USA, thinking about how little he belongs to that country, and wondering whether he ever will belong. Then when he returns to Italy, so much has changed that he can't feel a real sense of belonging there either.


I read this book in Italian (a useful edition with a long introduction in English and a good glossary). I think some of the subtleties of the novel were lost on me as the constantly shifting time frames would have been confusing in English let alone in Italian!


La Luna e i falo by Cesare Pavese, edited by Doug Thompson and published by Manchester University Press.


For the Italy in Books Reading Challenge

In Praise of Slow by Carl Honore

We live in a society that seems to be constantly accelerating, people rush through life. Recently however the Slow Movement has gained momentum (if that doesn't seem a contradiction in terms!). Based largely in Italy, the Slow Movement advocates for a slower approach to all aspects of life, from food to human relationships. Italians take it very seriously (except when it comes to driving!) as the Slow Food, Slow Cities and Slow Sex movements all have their centres in Italy. By 2003, 28 Italian cities were officially designated Slow Cities with another 26 working towards certification.

In this book, Carl Honore, a self confessed speed addict, explores the nature of this movement. Chapter by chapter he looks at a different element of the movement and also considers the nature of Slowness in general. He outlines ways in which we can all slow down and emphasizes that the idea is not to go back to pre-industrial times but to find a balance, such that we know when to take things slowly (as in savouring our food, making time for our families etc) and when speed is useful (as I'm sure Honore found as he flew round the world to research this book, which though set largely in Italy also visits the US, UK and Japan among other countries).

I live my own life at a relatively slow pace, I work part time and enjoy walking, reading and crafting, all typically slow pastimes. I found this book interesting in tracing the devlopment of the Slow Movement, but I did find that the chapters were all quite similar in their format and this became a bit dull towards the end. However over all I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to slow down their life at all.

In Praise of Slow by Carl Honore, published by Orion

as ever the text in orange contains hyperlinks that take you to websites where you can find out more

for the Italy in Books Reading Challenge

La Bella Figura by Beppe Severgnini

Subtitled An Insider's Guide to The Italian Mind this is an entertaining, accessible and revealing discussion about Italian habits and culture.


We are met at the airport and taken round Milan , Tuscany, Naples and Sardinia then back to the airport. Along the way we are introduced to Italian ideas and behaviour including their relationships with the church, their families and neighbours. It's a fun filled journey though sometimes it can get a little irritating, as the author hops from topic to topic excited to get everything in. I found the earlier chapters were more focussed than the later ones. The section on traffic for example I found particularly entertaining.


Many non-Italians are familiar with the chaotic traffic in Italy, either from personal experience or from other people's stories. However this book reveals the fact that the red traffic light for an Italian opens up a whole philosophical discussion about the nature of red, the relativity of safety and risk, while the chaotic parking is all part of an internal desire to park as close as is possible to the place one is visiting, even if there is a perfectly good carpark around the corner (this however doesn't explain the cars parked on stairs leading from carparks that I saw when I visited Turin.) And all the blaring horns? Well the Italian drivers are composing symphonies!


We are given similar entertaining insights into hotels, houses (including bathrooms, bedrooms and windows), restaurants, piazzas, airports and beaches. Hard facts and statistics are slipped in amongst opinions, amusing anecdotes and quotes from literature, making it entertaining and educational at the same time.


La Bella Figura by Beppe Severgnini, translated by Giles Watson, published by Hodder and Staughton


Read for the Italy in Books Challenge

Reading Challenges Update

I've now also signed up for the Haruki Murakami Reading Challenge, which actually shouldn't be too much of a challenge for me as I have recently read at least one book by Murakami every year and I have three of his books as yet unread on my bookshelves, so....

If you want to join in you can find out more here.

Meanwhile, Sandy commented on my post about the Italy in Books Challenge that he would struggle to find enough books set in Italy. So here are some recommendations:

Any book by Alessandro Barrico or Italo Calvino that is set in Italy
The Floating Book by Michelle Lovric
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco
The Tuscan Master by Peter Adamson
The Igauna by Anna Maria Ortese
Cooking with Fermat Branca by James Hamilton Paterson
Il Vizio dell'Agnello by Andrea Pinketts (though I don't know whether this has been translated into English)

Italy in Books Reading Challenge

This is the second of Brighton Blogger's Reading Challenges on her Book after Book blog. The Italy in Books Challenge asks us to read at least 12 books set in Italy between 1 January 2011 and 31 December 2011. Whether written by Italian authors or not, it doesn’t matter. They don’t have to be set exclusively in Italy but this country needs to play a significant role in the book. The challenge can include non-fiction books about Italy.

If you want to join in, you can find out more here.