From Publishers Weekly
Around 1951, French writer Giono (1895-1970)?who in these pages claims that he is not a traveler.... I seem scarcely to have moved in fifty years"?left his staid, familiar life and traveled with his wife and another couple to post-WWII Italy. Here, Giono (The Horseman on the Roof; Angelo), known for his novels depicting provincial settings, first explores Turin in Piedmont, the homeland of his father's family. From there, he travels steadily westward, though remaining in the Italian north?for him, "there is nothing attractive about places like Naples and Capri. The exquisite azure blue bores me as much as the rocks and flowers." He journeys to Milan, Brescia, Lake Garda (where "Mussolini set up the vicious yet ineffectual Republic of Salo") and Lonato, where the "countryside of Virgil's Georgics" can be seen. Giono shares folktales and historical tidbits as related by the locals he meets?though many details will be obscure for those not as familiar with Italian history as he. Traveling through Verona, he finally reaches the dustless city of Venice, where Venetian girls, while very stylish and pale, are so anemic that they have to go to the abattoir to drink blood from a freshly slaughtered ox. While Giono sometimes directs readers to less interesting cul-de-sacs, he captures nicely (assisted by Cumming's translation) the beautiful and seemingly quiet Italian countryside and its people, offering a striking contrast to the many Italian films of the same time that depicted a more depressed and tumultuous nation.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Kirkus Reviews
In this intimate narrative of his travels through Italy, appearing in English for the first time (it was originally published in 1954), Giono brings his novelists sensibility not only to the beauty and surprise that is Italy but to the profound questions of why one travels, and what one brings to such an undertaking. French but of Italian origin, Giono is one of this centurys most important novelists. His journey follows the well-trod route from Turin and Milan through Venice, the Apennines, and Bologna. But it is not so much the cathedrals and palazzi, the museums and panoramas that interest Giono as the national character that can be read in the humanity of a minor road or the magical encounter between Catullus and Dante and scantily clad typists from Milan . . . pedaling water-tandems together with their bosses on the banks of Lake Garda. Giono hates the behavior of tourists, is bored by the azure of Naples and Capri, and hates politicsbut he is charmed by priests on Vespas and loves espresso. We get a little bit of everything in the mix, as well as Gionos contemplation of happiness, retreat, melancholy, and friendship. Immersed in so much history, Giono reflects that there are only a few historic dates in each year, and the rest of the time . . . life is without history, when its a matter of how to be happy. Late in his tale, Giono considers that Machiavelli had a lot to say about the nature of power, but it may have been having his shoe repaired by a perceptive cobbler, or a chat with a very sensible grocer on his doorstep, [that] put him on the right path . . . An Italian Journey shares that, too. Giono skips over the obvious, goes right for the magic of his subject, and adds his own richly invested insight. His enchanting invitation to the idiosyncratic charms of Italy stands out brightly among the ho-hum abundance on the subject. --
Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
