Customer Reviews

Across the Bridge of Sighs: More Venetian Stories

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KIRKUS REVIEWS, September 1, 2005:
"The author of Venetian Stories (2003) returns with another enchanting tribute to la Serenissima.
An American who has lived in Venice for more than 30 years, Rylands writes with the simplicity--the apparent transparency--of someone experiencing a world in translation, but she is a singularly perceptive outsider, and her portrait of Venice is finely nuanced. She conveys whole life stories in a few lovel sentences, and she reveals all the charming truths buried within small, inconspicuous encounters. Characters flit through the collection, sometimes in a starring role, sometimes mentioned in passing--just like in life. "Restoration" -- a story of love, fate, and a crumbling palazzo--balances the vicissitudes of reality with fairy-tale undertones, and "Vocation" offers a similar mix of the provident and the pragmatic. "Design" is a sharply hilarious but not unkind portrait of new money triumphant. "Fortune" is a priceless little comedy of manners, a gem that would sine in any setting. Indeed, each entry in this volume stands on its own as a well-crafted and entertaining work of short fiction, but it's only in viewing the collection as a whole that one appreciates the grand scope of Rylands's project. With these subtly intertwined stories, she offers both a telling vision of Venice's current state of entrophy and a carefully hopeful glimpse of its future. Many of the characters in these stories leave Venice, but a few of them return. Foreigners and arrivistes are ejected, but some are embraced. Considered altogether, these stories suggest that the past can only survive when it's married to the future, and that the real wonder of Venice is not its network of canals but its community of people--noble, flawed, loving, spiteful, sad, gracious, interdependent, and wholly human.
Elegant, worldly-wise and as captivating as the city it celebrates."
This says it all.

Ever since I read Venetian Stories I've been awaiting a sequel with all of the anticipation of a ten-year-old J.K.R. fan. Thank you, Mrs. Rylands, for not disappointing. I savored this book for over a week, trying to carefully digest each vignette before it slipped into the intertwined mass of the whole. Except for being short-changed at every turn, Venice is the best place on earth, and Mrs. Rylands' book only add to the richness that tourists are hard-pressed to appreciate. Bravo!

I disagree with the reviewer who said this book didn't bring Venice to life (although there is seemingly nothing about the Bridge of Sighs). First, these are short stories, not a Donna Leon mystery or the Great American-Italian novel. You have to be in the mood for short stories, I think, but if so and they are well written, you have a good read. Second, the stories center around the same people in the same neighborhood, who know each other, are related to one another, know each other's business and personal affairs, etc. Right away this makes the stories more real than a collection of detached tales that have nothing to do with each other. Finally, I haven't been to Venice (would love to go) but I've read a lot about it and these stories seem in agreement with works of other authors. It's good to remember that if you live in a place, New York, London, Paris, Venice, you get a different "feel" for it than does a person who comes for a week for shopping, sightseeing, eating in the best restuarants, going to the theatre. Real life is much the same everywhere in some ways. There is Countess Giulia shlepping her groceries off the bus from the mainland onto a boat to get home. There is Severino living with his parents and paying room and board at 29, probably because life in the city is expensive. A lot of the characters are rich people, I assume that the author knows a lot of rich people. But you get a good dose of reality too. All the small specialty shops going out of business thanks to the big box stores and supermarkets on the mainland. I felt the author gave us a look beyond the romance and the tourist attractions. I intend to find her first book and read it.

I must admit that I'm a sucker for Venice, having been there on my honeymoon. The marriage failed but my love of the city remains. This book brings back the sights, sounds and smells of Venice . It is a quick read with its interconnected stories tied to the restoration of a palazzo. I do intend to read the author's first set of stories as well. I can hear the bells now.....

I bought this book on a recent trip to Venice hoping it would capture some of the magic of the city and go deeper into some of the city's appealing mystery. Unfortunately, the author's lack of ability to develop the characters in her stories meant that I never felt the door to the city really opening.

The author DOES have a way with plot. She has interesting stories to tell, most of which I assume are culled from her personal experience living in Venice for so many years.

However, the stories never really come to life. I agree with another reviewer that her characters are the problem. Rylands disobeys the first rule of creative writing: show, don't tell. She spends so much time telling the reader about the characters that there is little for the reader to discover on their own. You never truly feel like you know the characters and understand where they are coming from and why they do what they do; instead you feel like are you just trying to keep up with the stories as they twist and turn.

At times the author doesn't seem to want to get to know her characters better either. An example--in one of the stories, "Mobility" the two main characters have a serious fallout that ruins the career of one of them. Yet a few years later they meet again and they agree to work together once more. Instead of explaining this contradiction the author writes, "...for some reason--Blunckaie himself couldn't say--he accepted the job without demur and worked hard to get the study finished on time." This seems like a copout to me.

The book reads like a decent first or second draft from an author who was busy getting out her stories onto paper and hasn't taken the time to refine them for the reader. If you want to gain insight into the true character of Venice, I wouldn't recommend this book.

I picked up this book after reading John Berdendt's book on Venice and Jane Turner Rylands' book paled in comparison. She captured some colorful characters in her book, the writing is lively, but that's all she does, captures the characters. I realize the short stories are short stories but these character snapshots feel incomplete - more like a bit of poetry.

Where is the passion, the color and the life ? These bland stories paint a very pale picture of Venice - the city and people are never brought clearly to life. This book was a big disappointment for me.