Vaporetto 13 [Hardcover]

Robert Girardi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 8, 1997

vaporetto, n:  A motorized water-taxi; steam engine.  Commonly used in Venice, Italy.

In a city sustained by a miracle,a woman with an unfathomable past and a man with an uncertain future are about to engage in a romance that will transcend the ordinary boundaries of love and life.

Venice is echoing with the voices of all its old ghosts.  Beneath the city's exterior beauty--sundappled canals, charming gondolas, and splendid piazzas--is a world of bone-chilling cold, dank alleyways, and a tradition that yearly marks a Holiday of Death.  Cloaks and masks, disguise and intrigue, are a time-honored way of life in this familiar yet unknowable city in which Jack Squire, a currency trader on assignment from Washington, D.C., has taken up residence.  On one particular autumn night, swirling with damp mist and moving shadows, Jack finds himself in a campo teeming with stray cats.  There he meets Caterina, a woman bearing the sadness of centuries, whose strangeness immediately possesses him and whose past eludes and controls him.

Vaporetto 13 is a relentless and mesmerizing novel of one lover's search for truth and the haunted city in which he finds it.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Jack Squire, a currency trader based in Washington, D.C., is sent by his company to Venice for an extended assignment. There he develops an intractable case of insomnia and meets, during one of his nocturnal rambles, a beautiful and mysterious young woman. Caterina's steadfast refusal to tell Jack anything about herself, her background, or her family only piques his romantic interest. As he gradually learns the truth about Caterina, Jack finds that his life has completely changed. He discovers that he now has supernatural powers, loses his taste for worldly success, and changes careers. Girardi (The Pirate's Daughter, LJ 9/15/96) wastes a wonderfully described setting on flat characters and an inane and predictable plot. His third novel gives the impression of being too hastily written?scenes are stuck in seemingly arbitrarily, while the characters have little to do but be plot devices. Not recommended.
-?Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

An American banker adrift in Venice takes up with an older woman--centuries older--whom he encounters while meandering through the city's labyrinth of back streets, in an erotically charged, dreamlike third novel from Girardi (Madeleine's Ghost, 1995; The Pirate's Daughter, 1997). Jack Squire, a foreign exchange trader in Washington, D.C., is handed a plum assignment: to study Italian politics in Venice so that his bank can make a killing on the lira after the upcoming national elections. But once he arrives, something about the city won't let him sleep, or do his job properly. In the wee hours one morning, after yet another night of insomnia, Jack meets Caterina, who's feeding a yowling horde of the famous Venetian alley cats, and he's stunned by her pale, ethereal beauty. In subsequent meetings, Caterina tells him nothing about herself, but eventually she takes him to meet some of her friends, who are every bit as mysterious as she. By day Jack bungles his reports to Washington; by night he and Caterina become lovers, so that his nocturnal adventures with her are soon all he really cares about. A disastrous business meeting with his boss in Milan seems to signal the end of his career, until he discovers that he can somehow read imminent death in the other man's eyes, leaving the boss so unnerved that he spares Jack the ax. Soon after, Caterina stops seeing him, but he manages to find the place where she feeds cats again and trail her on her way home, finally spotting her as she boards a vaporetto with all of her weird friends. Jack later reaches the vaporetto's destination--and has his worst fears about the love of his life confirmed. For as long as tale's dream state is sustained, the result is exquisite and eerie. But the last third, involving a retirement home in Arizona and a new career in Bar Harbor, Maine, ranges far from Venice--and breaks the spell. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Delacorte Press; First Edition edition (September 8, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 038531938X
• ISBN-13: 978-0385319386
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #823,329 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

ROBERT GIRARDI is the author of five nov­els and one volume of novellas. His short fic­tion has been pub­lished in Tri-Quarterly and Vir­ginia Lit­er­ary Review, and his non-fiction has appeared in The New Repub­lic, Washingtonian Magazine, Landscape Architecture Magazine, and The Wash­ing­ton Post. His novels have been translated into nine languages--including Hebrew and Estonian. He lives in Wash­ing­ton, DC with his three children. He sells tickets at a movie theater in Bethesda, Maryland, and works as sexton of Our Lady of Victory Church in Washington, DC. (Visit him on the web at girardilit.com : email at [e-mail].)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Ghost Story, August 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Vaporetto 13 (Paperback)

This is a fine, quasi-literary attempt at a ghost story, about an insomniac foreign exchange trader visiting Venice who falls in love with a nocturnal, cat-tending woman who lived, apparently, centuries ago. The writing is crisp and unpretentious, suitably skeptical for the topic, and totally lacking in the cheap shock tactics stuffed into most supernatural fiction. It is more a rumination on events than a hair-rising tale, which is good, as obviously the premise of the story is difficult to accept. The lead characters are well developed and the exploration of the son's disillusioning relationship with his father is real and disturbing. While the book is a far cry from Poe--the themes, death of culture and family in "modern" life, are not adequately resolved--the story is several intellectual steps forward from Stephen King, primarily because the author does not patronize the reader. If you like paint-by-numbers fiction, however, you probably should skip it.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars E-Vaporated 13, July 23, 1999

By 

Sarah "Lizzie Borden" Davies, sarah... (London, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vaporetto 13 (Paperback)

Having read Girardi's debut novel "Madeleine's Ghost", I was excited to see he'd written another ghost story. I think his style of descriptive writing lends itself well to the supernatural theme, because the reader can become immersed in the story very quickly and the places and characters feel very real. Their lives, loves and fears are raw and true to life, this adding credibility and style to an otherwise simple ghost story.

I think we can call relate to one of Girardi's characters in one way or another - ok, so we're not all traders posted to romantic European locations, living in penthouse suites on the Grand Canal, but I'm sure we've all had a friend/colleague put us in an uncomfortable position before or had an infatuation with somebody unattainable at least once in our lives.

Girardi's wonderful description of Venice and all it's glories made me want to go back and experience the unique city again and again. I thought that the book was a little too short, but it worked nevertheless. At least Girardi knows when and how to finish a story rather than stretch it out for page number's sake and I LOVE the fact that his books have closure. Maybe it's fond memories of childhood fairy tales where they "all lived happily ever after...", but it's also healthy for adult reading. There seems to be so much literary drivel around at present that lacks a true ending, making Girardi's books a real pleasure to read.

I have enjoyed both these books immensely, but feel that Girardi has now exhausted the "Phantom-Misunderstood-Whore-In-A-Loveless-Marriage-But-Finds-Kindred-Spirit-Only-To-Meet-A-Nasty-End" genre. Nevertheless, I look forward to reading more of his work.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An entertaining slightly off-beat modern novel., March 2, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Vaporetto 13 (Hardcover)

This one sort of defies categorization. Is it a "ghost story" or a "mystery"? Maybe a bit of both, but a macabre novel without being a horror story is my best description. Almost like Kafka, but without the edge. Anyway, an entertaining novel set in modern Venice. A love story, in love with the intrigue of this historic city, or at least infatuated with its oddities. You will keep reading and you might even learn some interesting bits of Venetian history and culture along with your entertainment.