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the
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A-D |
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I-L
Lackey, Mercedes, et al
The Shadow of the
Lion |
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M-R |
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Michael Allen |
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David
Adams Cleveland |
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Robert Coover Pinocchio
in Venice
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Robert
Dessaix Night
letters
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Geoff
Dyer Jeff
in Venice, Death in Varanasi |
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Maxence
Fermine The black violin
Marina Fiorato The
Glassblower of Murano
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Cornelia Funke The
Thief Lord |
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Jon Courtenay
Grimwood
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David
Hewson
Lucifer's
shadow |
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Katie Hickman
The Pindar Diamond
Mary
Hoffman Stravaganza
- City of Masks |
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Kazuo
Ishiguro Nocturnes
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Joseph
Kanon Alibi |
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Donna
Leon |
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Michelle
Lovric |
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The Book
of Human Skin
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Susan Ashley Michael Crossing the Bridge of Sighs Around these parts we like unusual, we like quirky and we like to be wrong-footed. A novel which begins with a mature woman, called Claire, arriving in Venice after a marital break up, meeting an old friend who's intent on fixing her up with a new man, sets up certain sigh-inducing expectations. These expectations are swiftly challenged, though, with details like her marital rift having been caused by finding hubby having a trousers-down encounter with another chap in Père Lachaise, and her frequent encounters with the ghosts of long-dead famous Venice lovers. There's also the scene where Claire takes a gondola out into the lagoon to dispose of the husband's clothing. In a scene very reminiscent of Henry James's disposal of Constance Fenimore Woolson's clothing she has trouble with his non-sinking underpants and requests a loan of the gondolier's pole to give them a good poking in the crotch. See what I mean about quirky? Claire is a travel writer, in the minimal mould of Anne Tyler's Macon Leary in The Accidental Tourist, and so she gets around, meets people, looks at art, and generally does Venice proud for us, not putting a foot wrong in the Venetian detailing, if fact. Recent bereavement is another aspect shared with the Anne Tyler novel, which adds more unexpected narrative wrinkles. Cultural references and conversations abound, almost to excess, but when these involve Hitchcock's Rear Window, the eroticism of discussing John Ruskin, John Cornell's boxes, and someone fainting in front of a Bellini to quibble seems like quibbling. Events pan out in a pretty non-standard way for our heroine too, so sealing this as a read that is romantic but also realistic, and recommended. |
Lisa
Jean Murphy
Beverle
Graves Myers |
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Donna
Jo Napoli Daughter
of Venice |
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Ashkin
Ozcan The
Second Venice |
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Iain
Pears |
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 Alan Peat House of Cards This shortish ebook tells a tale in the spooky style of Susan Hill, only better - better than her Venice-set tale reviewed above anyway. It gives much better Venice, spun as it is around the cursed Palazzo Dario on the Grand Canal. If I tell you it concerns a Venetian psychiatrist and the love he loses to the dark power of the palazzo and how, years later, a woman enters his office looking uncannily like this lost love you'll predict another story of love, sex, and violent death - not exactly a rarity amongst Venice-set fiction. But this is a well-written page-turner with, as I say, much authentic Venetian atmosphere and detail. There's a dream-sequence wedding in the Miracoli church, for example, that I'm sure will jump back into your mind when you next visit. There's a tendency towards long-word overwriting in the early chapters, but this is far from inappropriate to the narrator, so we'll be forgiving. Well worth the download, if you have a Kindle. |
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Anthony Powell Temporary
kings
Juan
Manuel de Prada The
Tempest |
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Barbara
Quick Vivaldi’s
Virgins |
Thomas
Quinn |
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Roberta Rich The Midwife of Venice
James
Ringo Uncle
Theodor |
 William Rivière By the Grand Canal The First World War has just ended and its toll is still sinking in as the treaties are being signed. Hugh Thurne is a British diplomat who has gotten into the habit of using Venice as a base and refuge. He has friends there, in the Venier family, and a lover in the shape of a gorgeous young singer at the Fenice. His wife doesn't love him, his best friend has been killed in action, and his best friend's wife comes to live with him. His best friend's son falls for the dark-eyed daughter of the Venier family and old Giacomo Venier's health is failing. The viewpoints change, the making of history is discussed, love and lust is pondered, and love and death haunt the past and the future. This book reminded me nicely of early Iris Murdoch, in its ambitions if not its achievement, but it's a fine non-usual exploration of its time and of timeless concerns. It gives damn fine Venice too, both inside crumbling palazzos and out in gondolas. It really could have been set nowhere else. |
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André
Romijn Hidden
harmonies: |
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Jane
Turner Rylands |
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Friedrich von Schiller, |
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Christopher
Whyte |
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Barbara
Wilson
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Venice
continued... |
here.
Miss Garnett reacts strongly to the spirituality of the Catholic
religion and becomes fascinated by the story of Tobias and the
Angel and moved by the art the story has inspired. As Venice
works its magic on a sensibility more used to Ealing, she
also gets caught up in the lives of various Venetians and
visitors, and her life begins to take on aspects of the Tobias
story. This is a novel with that strange indefinable extra
special something. 
