Customer Reviews

Marcus of Umbria: What an Italian Dog Taught an American Girl about Love

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The protagonist of this memoir bugged me a little at first, but over time I grew to appreciate her, flaws and all. The problem was she seemed a bit callow and insensitive when she talked about her New York magazine job or desire to bed an Italian hunk, and I didn't know if I wanted to keep reading her story. The sheer escapist novelty of it all, however, drew me in, and I ended up loving her vivid and engaging depiction of her boyfriend's Italian farming family and their culture in the small Umbrian village where adult children stay close to home and often see their mothers every day. It was touching to learn more about the author's background with a single mother and to better understand her very human awkwardnesses and insecurities. I started to like her and sympathize with her, especially when she found and saved the abused dog Marcus and her relationship with her boyfriend began to fray.

I also learned a huge amount about the Italian way of life and farming practices, making ricotta, harvesting olives, training horses, and raising sheep, things I think about now when I pour olive oil on my lasagna or pass on by the lamb chops. The book is interesting, moving, funny, and a wonderful window on Umbrian rural culture, reminding me a little of James Herriot's stories. As for the emotional- memoir part, I think it might have been even more affecting if the author had revealed more about her relationship with her boyfriend (there's way more on life with his family and on the farm) and the writing work she was doing in Collelungo for an Italian businessman since almost nothing is even said about that. I felt the whole time at a bit of a distance from her and the TOTAL story, as if we were being treated magazine-style to only certain parts. I also wish there'd been more at the end about what happened to Justine and Marcus. I guess that means I'm ready for the sequel and to see more from this author!

Had a bad day at the office? Justine van der Leun had more than a few plus seven years of living in New York City, and she wanted a change. When an acquaintance invited her to spend a month in his village, Collelungo, Italy, she couldn't pack fast enough. Thus began a life changing adventure for her and a warm, hilarious, head-on honest memoir for us.

MARCUS OF UMBRIA will enchant from the first page. After meeting a handsome musician/gardener, Emanuele, during her first visit to Italy Justine decides to move there permanently in hopes of finding "a great love.....a new place and a new way to live." Now, Collelungo (population 200) was a new place for her but in actuality an ancient city in the heart of Umbria. The people were farmers, quite set in the ways of their predecessors and happy to follow them.

Emanuele's family, the Crucianis, took her in - albeit they found her odd. For her part, Justine attempted to adapt,, helping where she could, gamely following their habits, and attempting to learn the language. But she found that much of the fabric of life for the Collelungoese had been woven centuries ago and she could not change a stitch "This was a culture of women who took care of men from birth to death, and of men who feigned incapability until they actually became incapable." (ie Justine once saw an aged woman carefully making her way across the piazza carrying a stack of starched and ironed shirts - after all, "she had been ironing her son's shirts for seventy-five years.")

Justine found herself "unable or unwilling to do what society dictates an Umbrian woman should do - including incessantly cleaning up after a man, killing chickens with my bare hands, and cooking lasagna and wild boar." However, in addition to finding that she and Emanuele were not meant for each other Justine did find the love of her life to date in a small pen attached to the horse barn - a badly neglected puppy whose ribs she could easily count. She immediately made him her own and named him Marcus. As it turned out he was a she and a purebred English pointer. Caring for Marcus in a place where dogs were treated as livestock and often died by the age of three. Nonetheless, she persisted much to the consternation of the Cruciani family.

Speaking of that family, the author has created unforgettably vivid verbal photographs. It is as if her words were a camera clearly imaging mother Serenella (who worked 14 hours a day and then came home to prepare a feast in 20 minutes); father Fabio with his ever present cigar who is usually found in a seated position, Emanuele's siblings and diverse relatives. Hopefully some day MARCUS OF UMBRIA will become a film as these people are too wonderful not to be brought to mind again on a wide screen.

Justine van der Leun has given us a memoir to savor, a sampling of the Old World vis-a-vis the new, a candid remembrance enriched with life lessons, laughter, and the ever changing faces of love.

Gail Cooke

This charming memoir takes us through American-girl Justine's eyes after she spontaneously moves in with her new Italian lover and his farming family in rural Umbria. We see how very different family life is within the confines of an unfamiliar culture, far from home.

The author pokes gentle fun at her cultural clashes, yet also pierces through the romantic veil we all might harbor of becoming an ex-pat in some dreamy hilly Italian town. Instead, we see what life is really like in a depressed country region where domestic animals are sorely neglected and Italian babies are fetishized. Marcus of Umbria not the Tuscan fantasy of other tales.

Justine rolls with the punches, rarely pulling the Ugly American card. She realizes she is an outsider, but that she is at least one that is largely amusedly tolerated by her adopted family/community.

Where she doesn't mesh at all is in her relationship with the animals of Umbria. If in Italy babies become fetish objects, in the United States we dote on our dogs to an extent that confounds and rather appalls the Italians. By the time Justine realizes she's more in love with the sweet little pointer she's rescued than her actual lover, it's clear that she needs to return home.

This memoir was a pleasant, swift read,perfect for relaxing at the end of a long day. There aren't any serious crises in the narrative. It's a nice little travelogue about rural Italian life.

Unfortunately the book is marketed as a dog story. It's really not. Eponymous pet Marcus is really just an excuse to hang the narrative on a theme and appeal to pet people. The memoir is good enough to stand on its own, so the reader is left confused about dog story expectations. Be aware that Marcus of Umbria is actually about cultural commentary - with a dog in it - than about the dog herself, and all will be right with the world.

One quibble: the flow of the story ends suddenly. This occurs in many memoirs - where the author seems to have a deadline and doesn't have the time to actually wrap anything up. I guess that is like life: not everything gets resolved in a neat little package. Yet, still, I can't help but feel if you are going to write a story about your life, that you find a way to create a natural stopping place for the story you've built 215 pages around.

I totally fell in love with this book and with Marcus. For anyone who loves Italy and loves dogs or even one of the two, this is a must-read. For my work, I read numerous books about Italy and while I don't begrudge the success of Frances Mayes and books like Under the Tuscan Sun, books like Marcus of Umbria are unique on the literary landscape.

Why? The author reveals the REAL Italy - where Italian views of animals are heavily influenced by war and hardship, where small town life (and gossip) can get stifling and where things that are out of the norm are seen with suspicion. Don't get me wrong, van der Leun also introduces us to all that is right with Italy and Italian life - the generosity of its people, the flavors of its cuisine, the bonds of family.

I could relate to van der Leun in that I also rescued a dog as a single, young woman. It turned out to be the best decision of my life and broadened my life and deepened my heart immensely.

This is one of those books that really deserves great success. Buy it - you won't regret it.

My husband once asked me, "Another dog book?" But there are no regrets with "Marcus of Umbria." What could be better than a true life story like "Under the Tuscan Sun" with a loving pooch. Although the human love story did not quite work out, Justine and Marcus did make it into a fantastic tale of found love.

Justine went to Italy to help work on a book and felt an instant attraction for a sexy gardener, Emanuele. She ended up moving in with him and that in Italy is an invitation to join his family. Justine's memoir is full of surprising details about Italian families and images of the beautiful Italian countryside. While there, Justine learns the idiosyncrasies of rural Italian life, which unfortunately included their so un-American treatment of dogs. Dogs were just treated just like any farm animal and most of them were caged or tied. They were not seen as pets and not allowed in the house. When Justine finds Marcus penned up and covered with fleas, she is appalled and takes the dog as her ward. The whole village thought she was crazy but it turns into the best relationship Justine has ever had. When faced with the reality that Justine had to go back to America, she is torn between leaving Marcus in the world she knows or take her excitable new friend to unfamiliar surroundings. This story shows how a dog can cleave into a person's heart and show what true love is all about.

After a three week vacation flirtation with a handsome Italian farmer, named Emanuele, in the rural town of Collelungo, Italy, author Justine van der Leun, briefly returns to NYC, quits her job writing for a women's magazine and returns to live with Emanuele. What follows is a delightful story of her time in this village and with Emanuele's extended, warm hearted family the Crucianis.

Justine is introduced to a different way of life than she had known in the US. Family is everything and the Curcianis love, fight and make up loudly and often. Mama Cruciani loves and tends to her grown up brood fiercely, working a full time job and cooking meals, cleaning and doing laundry for her grown up sons and husband. To a great extent the Crucianis live off the land, and we are witness to the slaughtering of pigs and lambs, the training of horses and the making of olive oil. What we also get quite clearly is a look at the brutality towards animals of this rural life. Indeed, the Marcus of the title, a female hunting dog is woefully neglected by one of the Cruciani sons, tied up in a pen and left to drink green sludge, before she is rescued and loved by Justine.

All of this is quite interesting and often entertaining, but be warned this book is not predominantly about the author's relationship with Marcus. The title clearly is a case of misleading advertising. I can only surmise that the author's literary agent mother suggested it be marketed as a dog book because they sell so well. As a dog lover, that's what drew me to this book. Although it's not really a dog book, I was not, however, disappointed by its engaging story.

This book strikes me as a kind of cross between Under the Tuscan Sun and A Year in Provence. It involves an American girl who goes to live in the Italian countryside to find herself (she falls in love with an Italian, but she makes it clear that she's dissatisfied with her life in New York and is motivated by the search for something better) and then describes the extraordinarily different life lived by the Italian family of which she becomes part. It is at once fascinating and annoying.

The Fascinating
Van der Leun's descriptions of the lives of working class rural Italians are astonishing - and I write as one who has spent much time in Italy (its urban parts anyway). Their attitudes, values, and obsessions seem to have little to do with what we, as Americans, understand to be the modern world. It's in no way the picturesque world of Under the Tuscan Sun, and Van der Leun has a real gift for observation and capturing a sense of personalities and places.

The Annoying
Why is this called Marcus of Umbria: What an Italian dog taught an American girl about Love? While Marcus is an interesting character, she is hardly more important than any other (except Emmanuele, Van der Leun's love interest, who is oddly less important than most), and I think the title totally misrepresents the experience a reader has with the book: there is very little love (or any other emotion). More importantly, Van der Leun is not a terribly sympathetic character with whom to make this journey. While she is clearly intelligent and often perceptive, she is also immature (calling her a girl in the title is appropriate, even though she was 25 when this adventure began), finds herself way too clever, and, as she remarks, is definitely egoista [selfish]. If she learned something in this experience, other than what was obvious to all of us from the outset, that spoiled New York rich girls can't fit into the lives of working-class Italian farmers and that dogs make good pets, I don't know what it was.

I brought this book with me on my upstate NY camping trip in case of a rainy day. I simply could not put it down once I started reading. I love Justine's writing style and her introspective honesty pours out on the page making you really feel for her. She's the type of person you want to be friends with after reading the book, and you definitely want to meet Marcus. I'm a huge animal lover and I found myself getting angry at the cultural differences in attitude towards pets/furry family members over seas, but that's my own bias and personal feelings making me a little judgemental. Sadly, there are people everywhere who aren't "animal people," but at a couple points I wanted to jump into the pages and rescue some of the animals.

Anyway, back to the book. I loved it so much, I made my entire family read it and they all loved it as well. I can't wait until Justine comes out with another book. I hope she sticks to her personal adventures and anecdotes because she has a real talent for it.

Justine, in her mid-twenties, is working for a magazine in New York City when she decides she needs a change of pace. She vacations in Umbria, Italy, and finds what she thinks is true love in a handsome Italian gardener. She goes back to New York quits her job and moves to the 200 person town of Collelungo. She is taken in by his family and treated as one of their own, though she can barely speak the language. His English is a little better than her Italian. In the meantime she finds an English pointer, neglected and living alone in a pen outside his parents' house, which she quickly adopts. She soon finds out she loves the dog much more than the man. She thinks the dog is a boy at first so names him Marcus only to find out it is a female but Marcus sticks. Justine, already the talk of the town, quickly becomes the laughing stock of the town for the way she treats Marcus. Italians treat dogs as they would livestock but Justine takes Marcus everywhere with her and they are inseparable.

But this book is about much more than the love between a woman and her dog. Justine tells how the Italians of this small town live close to the land, she even describes slaughtering of pigs and lambs and how they are taken care of before they give their lives for the dinner table. She talks about foraging for mushrooms and how much work goes into getting the olives off the trees to make olive oil. She further describes how each family makes its own wine and thinks theirs is the best around. She describes how generous the people are, but she does not over romanticize Italy, she tells all it's dirty little secrets too.

This is truly a love story between a woman and her dog and what all Justine learned about love from Marcus. It is a sweet, charming and funny book which will keep you turning the pages until the very end. A great read from beginning until end.

This was an enjoyable and amusing book for the most part, with great details on life in Italy and the author's relationship with both her new boyfriend and her family. She excels at writing about the animals, all the farm animals in particular. The main flaws of the book are that the dog is referred to in the title but does not really take center stage much of the time and the ending is very loose and a bit unclear as to the precise nature of why the relationship ended. I was left wondering what the point was of the whole journey I had tried to follow the author on. At times she lacks enough personality for me to really engage with her. Still, it was an enjoyable read and certainly made me long to jump on a plane to visit Italy.