Monday,
March 19, 2007
Novel: "The Lady in the Palazzo"
the third of Marlena De Blasi's
Set in
The
ANNOTICO Report
First
it was
Marlena's wry wit, clever use of detail, and talent for
regaling with stories, with substance rather than saccharine, will capture you.
The Lady in the Palazzo
At Home in
By Marlena De Blasi
Algonquin
Books of
Reviewed by Scotia
Sunday, March 18, 2007
I have never met Marlena De Blasi but I feel as if
I know her, because of the way she writes, inviting you into her life,
introducing you to her friends, regaling you with stories. The Lady
in the Palazzo is her third memoir
of adventures in
In the first, the chef and
food consultant tells of her whirlwind romance with Fernando, a
"blueberry-eyed Venetian," and her decision to sell her house and her
business to move from the American Midwest to
In the second book, they
leave
The book begins with the smell of sausages "perfuming the piazza." It is the Festival of St. Anthony, and food, of course, is a key part of the proceedings. "Like a reliquary in a shrine, there is a wheel of sheep cheese set on a white-draped table and flanked by candles." The shepherd "is perhaps thirty, with eyes green and liquid as just-pressed oil set wide in his heart-shaped face. . . . He rides a Harley but leaves it in a shed on the edges of his land so as not to disturb his sheep." This is the kind of detail that so endears us to De Blasi.
This tale, told around the search for a place to live in Orvieto, tells of the frustrating mysteriousness of doing business in Italy, of the struggle of being the stranger in a new place, of the sensuousness of the food and the surroundings - even the mold on the walls of their temporary lodgings seems intriguing - and most important, of the people they come to know in the process.
At the end there's a party (and recipes). On the table, De Blasi lays handmade quilts and saffron-colored silk velvet. "What do you think?" she asks her husband.
"Well, if only you had trimmed the quilts with the tails of Russian sables and maybe added one more layer of fabric, it might be perfect. This will do, though," he replies.
Americans from
Her Italian friends told her it couldn't be done, that these people who had grown up side by side in their well-defined roles would never sit down at the same table together. It's the genius of the American outsider that she makes it all happen as though it were meant to be.
At the heart of this
memoir, as of the others, is the continuing love story of a later-in-life
romance. De Blasi travels with her Fernando and a
friend to
When she meets her husband at the hotel, he's pale. When she asks what's wrong, he answers: "Today I noticed someone. . . . A woman. I saw her and felt just as I did when I first saw you. . . . I was shocked when I found myself in that same state of . . . excitement or agitation. . . . I kept thinking about this woman. . . . And when we arrived back at the hotel, the first thing I saw was her . . . standing in the lobby with her back to me. . . . and then she turned around, and she was you. You were she."
Wow!
Living (and loving) well
really is the best revenge.
Scotia W. MacRae is the former opinion page editor of the Times of
Trenton.
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/entertainment/
books/
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