Customer Reviews

A Valley in Italy: The Many Seasons of a Villa in Umbria

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I have now read St. Aubin De Teran's "A Valley In Italy" at least three times. It is to be recommended to anyone with a love of Italy and of house restorations. Unlike Frances Mayes' book, "Under the Tuscan Sun", which came after it (and which I also enjoyed despite what follows), this is not a lifestyle book. There are no recipes and there is no dwelling on the sensuousness of eating and drinking as in Mayes. Side by side with St. Aubin De Teran's book, Mayes' appears rather superficial and solipsistic but of course, well targetted to a foreign, particularly American audience. In the course of "Under the Tuscan Sun", there is really only one Italian the main American characters seem to have any continuing relationship with, albeit very fleeting, the man who found the house for them. There is never any sense that they are anything but very middle class tourists who just happen to have a house in bella Tuscany they visit in their holidays. In "A Valley in Italy" the family of the writer who speaks fluent Italian, actually lives in the villa all the year around and engages with the local community on a daily basis and through all their festivities. The two children are pivotal in propelling them immediately into Italian society, an advantage Mayes and her partner did not enjoy. Where Mayes is obsessed with her own personal sensations and can rhapsodize over a sun-dried tomato, St. Aubin De Teran is a cool observer of the inhabitants of San Orsola and documents their lives with a detail that shows her fascination with the objective world rather than simply how it impinges on her. It is a memorable account both of a small Italian village and its tight community life and the achievement of a fantastic dream, the renovation and partial rebuilding of a derelict villa of palatial proportions, boasting 72 windows, considerably larger than the more modest peasant abode Mayes takes on. Everyone I have recommended the Mayes and St. Aubin De Teran books to have loved the latter and found the former rather self-indulgent. It has to be said that St. Aubin De Teran's family are eccentric in the grand English style but as the focus is outwards upon place and people this is not an irritant like Mayes' precious harping on peculiar obsessions like other people's linen in "Bella Donna." Rather, the idiosyncrasies documented are viewed as bizarre and impractical in the Italian setting like the mouldy jars of homemade facial potions the daughter replaces for all the necessities of camping in the ruined villa or the Scottish artist husband's prancing about in full highland regalia which is his way of mocking the traditonal role of almighty pater familias assigned him by the Italian builder who forces him on tours of inspection. This book only improves with rereading. I heartily recommend it.

In A Valley in Italy, Lisa St. Aubin De Teran tells the story of how she found her dream house in Italy and how her perpetually wandering family put down roots at last. De Teran and her husband bought an unfinished and deteriorating villa in a small town in Umbria and then set about restoring it - or, actually, hiring people to restore it. In the process, they assimilated into the nearby village, entering its life and even following some of its customs.

Although I loved the book, it probably isn't for everyone. For one thing, De Teran and her husband are unusual people - the sort of people who would buy an enormous, mostly ruined house without any clear idea of how they would pay for it or how they could rebuild it. They are bohemian, they live casually, and they clearly have values very different from the average American's. But for those who can appreciate people unlike themselves, the characters of the family members will make the book; much of the pleasure of it comes from hearing about the results of these people's unusual choices.

Readers should go into this expecting a very personal memoir. De Teran has chosen an Austen-style microcosm - just a village and a manor house - and focuses on it exclusively. The result is a book that is not a travel guide and not a cultural survey, but rather a painting of a particular place at a particular time seen through particular eyes. A Valley in Italy beautifully communicates the nature of San Orsola and its residents - and also, of course, the author and her family.

De Teran's prose, while unorthodox, is most enjoyable. Her humor and her descriptive prose are extremely enjoyable. Unlike many of the authors writing memoirs of Italy, De Teran doesn't take her subject with absolutely unleavened gravitas - she can be light and funny as well as artistically descriptive. In fact, the tone and voice not only make up for the somewhat unconventional paragraphing and the sometimes harsh transitions between topics, they manage to turn it into a cohesive style.

But probably the biggest single strength of the book is the author's involvement. Too many authors of expat memoirs hold themselves aloof, in their text and presumably in their lives, from their adopted countries. They lack the linguistic and social skills to enter village life, so they observe it and document it from afar. De Teran apparently managed to enter into the local culture, and as a result her book contains much less navel-gazing and is much less patronizing than many books of this kind.

In short, Lisa St. Aubin De Teran has written a gorgeous, pleasant, and funny book on the kind of life most of us would rather read about than live. A Valley in Italy succeeds supremely as both an engaging portrait of an Italian village and an amusing tale of one eccentric family's experiences. This book is well worth reading, not just once but again and again.

I have to agree with the reviewer, Foxtop, this writer is so distracting with her eccentricities and idiosyncracies that I found this book barely tolerable. In fact, after author calls her daughter "the child Iseault" one time too many for me (and this was after only about 20 pages), I actually wrote in the margin how grating on my nerves this was. Fortunately, I know my sister will get a laugh out of my comments (and will probably be equally annoyed by the author's "precious-isms" as I) when I pass this book onto her.

I very much enjoyed the book as a whole-- the sense of place, the Italian characters, etc. But Ms. St. Aubin de Terain herself--hoboy. Sure, you could call her quirky, non-suburban, whatever you want, but the fact remains that she was annoying. I won't even talk about her daughter. The book was definitely worth reading, but not re-reading; not by a long shot.

As a lover of all things Italian, I have read many books and found this one to be so annoying that I could barely finish it. The book is less about Italy and becoming enculturated in the author's new home town and more about how preciously eccentric St. Aubin's family is.

If you have little patience for pomposity and narcissism, skip this book.

If you want an example of really poor parenting skills, you might like it.

This was a delicious book that brialliantly chronicles the author's life in Italy, with humor and joy- two components starkly absent in Under the Tuscan Sun. Perhaps because she is British, or bcause she is a bit wacky, Ms. St. Aubin de Teran writes with great affection and truly captures the eccentricity of the Italian village and its villagers. Her tales of her children and her au paires and their interaction with the villagers and their new villa invoke a warmth and tone found only with someone who really loves her subjects. This book was all that Under the Tuscan Sun should have been, and I'm not sure why it has been less popular. It's just great!

After having read the author's book, "The Hacienda," I was curious to see where life had lead her, and in this book, she has a new family and they have chosen Italy as their home. Most of the book is concerned with the trials of fixing up a run-down villa, while they manage to live with bats and birds swooping over their heads and weather blowing in through the vacant windows. The author and her husband are obviously eccentrics, and have some peculiar habits, such as referring to her teenaged daughter as "the child," driving a two-seater sportscar when they have a family of four (this involves contortions) and wearing outlandish clothes. There are also a lot of tiresome gardening descriptions, which do make one wonder how the garden eventually must have turned out in later years, but add nothing to the story. The real reason to read this book is that St. Aubin de Teran loves the local people and finds a way to be one of them, living life alongside of them and experiencing their sorrows and joys and annual celebrations as a native. No tourist experience can come close, and most people do not have this ability to "go native" with so much fondness for the local characters and their way of life.

Those who enjoy reading about very eccentric, irresponsible and self absorbed people who seem to have difficulty relating to others, particularly their own children.... the elder of which is referred to always as 'the child'.... might truly like this book. The writing is good, occasionally funny and paints a nice picture, BUT the author and her family are so unappealing that by the end of the first chapter I was ready to toss the book in disgust. Since I was stuck in an airplane waiting out a thunderstorm and had little choice, I read on.... hoping it would get better. It didn't. After reading several books about people restoring Italian homes and making a life for themselves in Italy, I've come to realize that the author's personality must be tolerable for you or the book will not be. This woman is from another planet. I just can't warm up to someone who would endanger her children's health, at a minumum, and seems to have almost no interest in them, except to chronical their exploits. Her husband is a real case, her daughter, 'the child', is following in Mom's footsteps of crazydom. Only the little boy might have a chance at normalcy, but it's hard to tell. Anyway, if crazy characters seem like fun, this may be the book for you. (Italy, by the way, is only incidental in the book.) If, on the other hand, you want sane, touching, funny, real people you'd like to know and their very charming, very Italian story, ready The Hills of Tuscany by Mate.

I sure enjoyed this tale of setting up housekeeping in an abandoned villa! I wish I could do this! I love the way Lisa writes. Her descriptions of the neighborhood people are wonderful. I am now looking through the lists to see what else I can read of hers!

Fascinating autobiographical book of the 'we are artistic, and stumbled on a lost treasure - at low price' type. Dated 1994 - five years after Peter Mayle got to work advertising Provence so successfully.

The author's style is breathless and convoluted - 'My childhood fantasy of musical bedrooms was coming true. Ever since reading Orlando one summer while a reluctant inmate of the children's ward at the South London Hospital for women and children, tied down by drips and tubes to a bed among many beds, I'd longed for a house where I could ramble from room to room, sleeping at random on unknown territory.'

She seems unreliable, omitting such details as money and the nitty gritty of building. This may be due to the genuinely enduring taboo against money, in polite conversation. I suspect in fact she's shrewd about purchasing, judging by occasional remarks - selling their apartment in Venice, for example.

On her name - she was educated in London, but this process was ended, or perhaps postponed, when she ran away at 16 with a Venezuelan described as a 'landowner'; I'd guess Italian links with South America influenced her. She remarried twice by 1994 and I assumed she'd retained the most exotic surname she could (in the manner of Doris Lessing) - it would be amusing if her maiden name was, say, Lisa Smithers. Her husband at the era of this book was a painter six years younger, Robbie with a double-barrelled surname. Fortified by this information I searched on Internet and found an art gallery site which says he's self-taught; his paintings include nudes in a shiny metal-finish effect, rather like that chap with green female torsoes popular in the 1970s, and character studies of moody Italian peasantry, and still lifes. One visualises him upstairs in the mansion, agonising over the high discounts that galleries ask, while his model gets either sunburnt, or chilly and damp, in the roofless studio.

The account is largely of falling in love with the remains of a palatial villa; as far as I've been able to decipher, they found out little about its past. Neither of them seemed to even know where Umbria was. Her description gives the illusion that Italy has no autostrade or agenti di proprietÓ or other modern conveniences, and that her building was like some South American lost monument amid jungle.

She talks about 'restoration' - taken seriously this may involve local-ish bricks, marble, terracotta, timber, glass, lime mortar and plaster - all of which sounds very difficult, now; however there is no detail, and though few people would want an itemised list, it would be nice to know what the 'workmen' got up to.

There are cameos, vignettes, apercus, stories and digressions about her family (beautiful daughter, then 15, who modelled), Italian holidays, food - ham, salami, wine, tomatoes boiled into a paste with basil, panettone. And visits from the locals, banking and the mysteries of Italian employment, corruption and slow mail deliveries, the tobacco crop, etymological bits and pieces. There's disappointingly little about the Second World War (or the First), which events after all were partly responsible for the decay of parts of Italy and the rest of the world.

It's easy to see why some reviewers loved the book - and also why some threw it away in exasperation. There's a reliability issue - she says, as just one example, that sudden Autumn storms left deep pools of water inside the building; they developed a strategy of rolling up carpets and stashing possessions safely, and all would be dry by next day, which seems unlikely.

Her style has a parallel with her own romantic attitude - the reader has to fight through tangled allusions and byways to finally glimpse and explore the half-expected treasure.

Naturally, having been drawn in, many readers must feel triumph in merely having made the effort of the journey, a displacement which indirectly reinforces the power of the words in a way which a more straightforward account wouldn't. It's a matter of opinion whether the final book is as alluring as the ruined building that she found on the hills.