25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a glorious adventure!, August 25, 2008
This is a wonderfully seductive book. The contemporary story delights with mystery, discovery, the entanglements of modern-day marriage and the possibility of release through self-discovery. The historical story is a wonderfully complex maze through the history of Venice, the world of artists, and blessed with a love story that is unbearably touching.
It is refreshing, original, and deeply satisfying.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Delightful!, September 9, 2008
I just finished reading this wonderful tale of discovery that takes place in Venice. I will probably read it again after I allow a little time to savor it and let it sink in. The writing is wonderful, the characters are multifaceted and interesting; there is also a delightful little dog and, of course, the beautiful city of Venice. I couldn't put the book down, from the minute Nel steps off a train to Verona and returns alone to Venice... to the end...well, I won't tell you the end. The book is fun, intriguing, interesting and, if you love Italy and Renaissance art, you will find it a total treasure. Never formula, it is as fresh, heady and stimulating as a cup of cafe espresso. Oh, how I wish I was picking it up for the first time all over again!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Lovely, But Not Without Its Drawbacks, July 17, 2010
Oh, the useless lives of women married to famous men, how they squander their time and their talents in deference to their more important mates. That is, until they wake up and say, hey, wait a minute, what about me? Such is the trajectory of one Cornelia Everett, 35 years old and married to a popular, charismatic and apparently obsessively self-absorbed musician.
A Stopover in Venice starts with Nel spontaneously pulling her suitcase off the overhead rack from a train bound for Verona and returning to Venice, leaving her husband Antony and his posse to finish their European tour without her.
Author Kathryn Walker in her first novel paints lovely pictures of old Venice, with its legendary light (a softer, watery version of Santa Fe's), its crumbling palazzos and its maddening maze of unmarked city streets and alleyways. And she does a convincing job of evoking the emotional netherworld of a young woman who fell into a particular sort of marriage (the one-sided kind that often comes with fame) before she was fully prepared.
The adventures to be found in a wonderland like Venice for an aimless and uncertain woman armed with her husband's credit card (which to her credit she uses intelligently and sparingly) are just right for a book that strives to hit a notch above the standard woman-in-transition genre.
Through a refreshingly not-improbable series of events, Nel finds herself a guest of a grand old signora in one of the aforementioned old palazzos, at one time used as both a convent and a hospital during the plague years. A young scholar named Matteo and his assistants are busy working on the careful reveal of a mysterious 16th century fresco buried under layers of old plaster in one of the many abandoned rooms, and Nel finds herself drawn in to the project and the mystery of the unknown artist.
The "family" that is created between Nel, Matteo, the Signora and her old housekeeper Annunziata and a couple of other researchers pulled in to help unravel the history of the building and its mysterious fresco gives Nel the sense of community and shared purpose she had missed in her marriage. Their warmth and conviviality convince her to tie up the loose ends she has left behind and leap forward into the unknown armed with a new perspective and possibilities.
A Stopover in Venice is an appealing story, filled with convincing scholarship and fascinating historical detail, but is not without its drawbacks. Walker has chosen a quirky writing style that eliminates quotation marks throughout all the dialogue, rendering this reader often confused between the actual dialogue and Nel's internal asides, frequently inserted without warning. Much of the book has a reportorial feel to it; transitions lack grace and characters seem to be anaylzed rather described. The classic "show, don't tell" mantra of all writing teachers everywhere seems to have been ignored.
Two seconds with Google has produced the information Walker's PR purporsely chose to leave out: she is an ex-wife of singer James Taylor, and this, her first novel, is a roman a clef of her own adventure in Venice when she left him. That answers many questions a reader might have about the nature of the storytelling in this novel.
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