Customer Reviews

Venice for Lovers (Armchair Traveller)

5 star:		(1)
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Looking for a good romantic story quite unlike those you've read and heard before? Here it is. Venice for Lovers reveals not only the love shared by a man and woman but also their mutual love for a place, one of the world's most beautiful, storied cities - Venice. Where better to evoke feelings of love and passion?

Working together (to my knowledge for the first time) noted novelist Louis Begley and his biographer wife, Anka Muhlstein, have penned a meritorious story. Add to this a stunning, finely nuanced reading by Malcolm Hillgartner and the result is an audiobook to dream on.

For the past 30 years Begley and his wife have spent their summers in Venice. They go there to write and have pretty much established a rigorous writing schedule for themselves. For one thing, they avoid social occasions. Thus, when she describes Venice it is much as seen through the eyes of the owners of restaurants where they repeatedly dine. Few listeners will forget Ernesto and his memories of the dreadful 1966 flood.

When it is Begley's turn he offers Venice through the eyes of a young man who comes to the city hoping to win an older woman with whom he has fallen in love. She spurns him but as it often is with youth there is more for him to discover.

Those who have been to Venice will welcome this opportunity to revisit it, and those who have not may well begin packing their bags.

Highly recommended.

- Gail Cooke

Any book about Venice attracts me. Without reading the one other review, I have to say that the publisher who told Begley he had the kernel of a book (after reading paper he, Begley, presented at a Venice preservation symposium)may not have gotten what he hoped for.
First, high marks for the first vignette about food and the chefs by his French wife ( and for the translator.) They should have had her write the whole book. While smacking of one-upmanship [really, how many of us have spent the last twenty years spending a month every year in Venice at a hotel (even a small hotel,) eating most of our meals at certain eating places {some grand, others modest} and developing personal relationships with the owners and or maitre d's?,] it was, nevertheless fun. As a food lover as well as Venice lover, it worked for me , no little of which was due to the nice writing style.

The second piece, a short story by Begley, crashes on the shore. A big let down after the first gem. Perhaps it is in tune with the times - a la some (The) New Yorker prose these days, but it wouldn't or shouldn't win Second Prize in the Prima Short Story Contest. Stoopid.

Then the last (third) piece [from his talk, one presumes.] It just seemed rather pointless or at best a stretch. Sure, three great writers used Venice as a backdrop in their stories, but it seems unlikely that a doctoral dissertion advisor would ever encourage his charge to consider this a serious project. It's more a throw away junket that might appeal to the gathering at the "Save Venice" or whatever group he addressed. Boring? Perhaps. Interesting? Not to this reader.

Bring on some more stories, books by the wife!!!