Customer Reviews

The Stone Boudoir: Travels Through the Hidden Villages of Sicily

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THE STONE BOUDOIR is a collection of stories about author Theresa Maggio's experience in the unnoticed mountain towns of Sicily. It's about the people she meets, their customs, stories and the island's rich and fascinating history (involving the Greeks, Romans, Arabs and the Normans).

At the start of the 20th century, Maggio's grandparents immigrated to America from Santa Margherita Belice, a small Sicilian mountain town. In 1973, Maggio makes her way to Sicily for her first visit. She finds the island so alluring that she returns for many more visits.

Not only does Maggio visit her grandparents' hometown, she goes further to explore other Sicilian towns. The writer describes them as, "Tiny jewels, remote and isolated, these are places tourists seldom see. But they are the island's hidden treasure and the secret spring of Sicilian endurance." After reading THE STONE BOUDOIR, I have to agree - what riches these places and people have to offer, indeed!

Maggio's descriptions of these villages are priceless - like her first visit to Polizzi Generosa, a town on the peak of the Madonie Mountain in north-central Sicily or sleeping in a cave home in Sperlinga, an ancient mountain town in Sicily's center. But it is the natives and their stories that make up the most pleasurable part of the book. My top three favorite stories are of Signora Maria, a 71-year-old woman with an amazing childhood who liked to memorize and could still recite folk poems by heart; Enza Dolce who has accomplished many firsts as a single woman in Sicily despite adversity and Nunzio Putrino, an old Sicilian bagpiper who met and wooed his wife over his music-playing without saying a word.

There's an excellent chapter on the 1968 earthquake that affected many of the towns. Margherita Cacioppo, who was nine when the earthquake occurred, shares her account. The images of what happened during the earthquake and what her family did to survive are very vivid.

There are many more fantastic stories, each one is unique but all contain the similar characteristic trait of a resilient people.

There are no photos in the book but you can find a nice collection highlighted on the writer's web site...Some of my favorites are: Maletto Bagpipes, A Sperlinga Cave dweller, Love on a Plate, The Stone Boudoir, Sheep Sleep in Palaces, Locati Wash on Line and many more. The photos are exactly the way I imagined them from Maggio's narrations. But is it definitely nice to see the real thing.

Reading THE STONE BOUDOIR is like having a cup of coffee/cappuccino/espresso/ tea (insert your beverage of choice) with a friend as she shares, with you, stories about her visit to a special place. What a wonderful look at Sicily and its people. You won't regret reading this book.

Fafa Demasio

Theresa Maggio is a talented writer & story-teller. In this book, she travels through the small villages of Sicily and presents to us her impressions as BOTH an outsider (her grandparents immigrated from Sicily and she was born and raised in NJ) AND an insider (she made numerous trips to Italy, had several extended stays, and had many local friends).

She is well-suited to play this dual role because of her intimate understanding of local customs and her ability to listen to the locals. Listening to "old-timers" and allowing them to tell their stories about "the way it used to be" is a lost art; very few have the patience or interest to do that anymore. Luckily, Maggio had the patience, interest and courage to talk with many locals--young & old--from numerous villages, and presents what she learned quite eloquently. Her descriptions of many of the villages are enough to strike up wanderlust in any reader!

There are some flaws, however. First, a line drawing map of Sicily showing the location of the villages would have been nice. Likewise, a few photos of the villagers and/or villages (even if not in color) would have added greatly to the overall effect of her writing. Also, when she attempts to write about the history of certain locales, it comes across as a passage form a history text (I happen to be a historian, so I'm familiar with historical texts). In these few parts, her writing becomes more bland & structured; a big contrast to the rest of the book which has a more fluid writing style. Believe it or not, it IS possible to present history in a fluid writing style. My final complaint with this otherwise good book is that some of the chapters are disjointed. Some chapters flow beautifully together, others just don't. Also, it is sometimes difficult to determine during which of her many trips she visited some villages. You may ask, "Does it really matter?" In a way it does because then you also know in what stage of life she was in, what she already had visited/knew, what was the purpose of her visit, etc.

Other than these few flaws, however, "The Stone Boudoir" was an enjoyable and easy read. Certainly recommended to everyone and anyone interested in Italy and in travel, in general. I walked away with a greater appreciation of the "hidden villages of Sicily", and the importance of immersing oneself in local culture whenever possible.

In her book The Stone Boudoir, Theresa Maggio shares with the reader, descriptions of rural culture in the mountain villages and towns on the island of Sicily. Having traveled to Sicily initialy to explore the birthplace of her grandparents while in college in 1973, she returned again and again, at times living with Sicilian friends and absorbing theirs and others stories and experiences.
One of the most striking aspects of this book is to realize that this rural culture exists litttle changed over the centuries, in spite of it's proximity to modern Italian/European culture. The description of the celebration of the Feast of Saint Agatha, celebrated every year in Catania is fascinating and one of the high points in this collection of essays/stories.

I've always been interested in reading about people and how they lived - past tense. This is a book about the people that live there today, in small Sicilian towns, in our modern world. Did I say modern? So little has changed in the towns the writer visited. The Stone Boudoir is not only about a place, but about the people that live there today. I found this book to be funny and beautifully written. I was captivated by the people she met along the way and long for more!

I was lucky enough to get an advance copy of this book. The chapters read like short stories about the small towns and the people of Sicily that few tourists ever see. While thousands have captured photographs of the smoke pluming from Mt. Etna, Maggio walks in the fields and talks to the people who live in the shadow of this active volcano. She even shares a cup of coffee with the engineer of the little train that circles the mountain and relates the stories he tells. This is not a book about someone who visited a distant land, but the experiences of a woman who has lived with the people and learned their language and customs.

The topic of this book -- the smallest hill towns of Sicily -- was interesting for its obscurity and was a good read, if rather limited. The tone is nicely evocative and the stories of the women the author met were particularly good. That said, it isn't clear what this book wants to be -- it is part autobiography, part tour, part essay, but the focus is muddled. The descriptions of the towns themselves are also unsatisfyingly short -- it is not clear whether the author had no more to say or didn't know how to say it. If space was an issue she could have cut the autobiography down a bit (how many times do we have to hear about her fisherman boyfriend?). What I sensed most was not that she loved these small towns, but rather the portrait of herself in them. Her perspective on place shows neither a strong aesthetic nor historic sense -- one is not able to really visualize the towns or the people, and the lack of pictures/graphs is annoying (particularly as she mentions taking photographs a number of times). Still, I'm glad to know about these towns, and can now go elsewhere if I want to learn more.

In The Stone Boudoir, Theresa Maggio has taken the fascination she has for the land of her grandparents and transmuted it into words of pure gold that vividly distill the essence of the Sicily she calls the "island's hidden treasure and the secret spring of Sicilian endurance."

The Sicily she goes in search of lies far beneath the radar of most guidebooks. In The Stone Boudoir, you will not find discussed, for example, Taormina, that once-mystical place now ruined by shops. Indeed, with the exception of Catania and, perhaps, Mondello (a suburb of Palermo), Maggio's discoveries are made in small towns, often high up on mountain tops and off the beaten track.

Each chapter of the book is a standalone essay - really a short story based on her explorations - and the fact that there is no discernable timeline connecting them all adds to the book's charm and eliminates what might otherwise be tedious and irrelevant backstory. Each story is a gem: the old people recall the night of the earthquake that destroyed the town from which Maggio's grandparents had emigrated; an old woman returns to the long-abandoned home of her childhood and finds a treasure; the author follows the two-day procession of a bejeweled effigy of a saint in Catania. The places in the stories sent me scurrying for my map of Sicily and wishing I were planning a trip there soon.

I had one small complaint about this book (hardback version): the endpapers are maps of Sicily colored dark blue with much detail in fine print; consequently, they are completely unreadable. A simpler, readable map showing the locations of the places mentioned in the book would be a welcome addition to any future edition.

But this is a small complaint about a book that gave me much pleasure. Brava, Theresa!

She shares the feelings and experiences of meeting the people and places of Sicily. Wonderful!! By combining the stories of her experiences with the history of the towns, she conveys the magnetism that pulls so many of us back to that island again and again. My only regret is that she doesn't include some of the photos she describes so well.

I am rather familiar with sicily,,,,therefore, although this book may (sometimes)verge on romantic times gone past, this is a VERY GOOD AND EASY READ. At least, i can relate easily to the passion with which the author narrates her genuine experiences in this land,,, It is also true that nowadays, within a few areas, some greed and bad decisions (called progress) have affected some areas adversely, but admitteldly, alot of effort is being made to reverse this.
A melting pot of culture, history, emotions, tradition, beautiful landscapes,,,this is Sicily. BUT this mixture MAY be a little bit of a challenge for some!

I'm half Italian, half Sicilian, and I've spent most of my life traveling and learning about mainland Italy. I always wanted to visit Sicily, and this book allowed me to see my Motherland through Maggio's experiences there. Once I started reading, I couldn't put it down. I felt like I was there with her, and it left me with a better understanding of the island, the people, and the traditions.

I was actually reading the book while on vacation to Malta, and my husband, noticing my interest in the book, booked a day trip to Sicily on my 25th birthday!