Desiring Italy: Women Writers Celebrate the Passions of a Country and Culture (Paperback)

~ Susan Cahill (Author) "It is hard to say whether the stock phrase of the stock tourist-"there is so little to see in Milan"-redounds most to the derision of..." (more)
Key Phrases: literary traveler, pietra serena, white azalea, Santa Maria, New York, San Lorenzo (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When literary art meets the warmth, beauty, and culture of Italy, the results are stupifyingly wonderful. Susan Cahill has gathered jewels of writing, penned by 31 women of letters, inspired by Italy. There's Muriel Spark on Venice, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Mary McCarthy on Florence, Florence Nightingale and George Eliot on Rome, Edith Wharton on Milan, and Mary Taylor Simeti on Sicily. All together Cahill's arranged a beautiful antipasti plate of the impact--on the mind, the spirit, and above all the senses--of Italy.

From Library Journal

In her collection of 19th- and 20th-century British and American authors writing about Italy, Powers (The Brooklyn Reader, LJ 12/93) has chosen the somber, brooding poetry of the Romantics?Robert Browning, Byron, and Shelley?and the self-reflective contemporary verses of Joseph Brodsky, Richard Wilbur, and Charles Wright. She represents the American and British confrontation with Italian manners through two short stories (by Malamud and Wharton) and in excerpts from the fiction of Forster, James, and John Mortimer, among others. Conversely, Cahill (Wise Women, LJ 5/1/96), whose selections are exclusively by women, has included the ballads of Francesca Alexander and a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Focusing on the effect of Italy's sensual pageant on visitors' emotional and psychological makeup, she selects the fiction of Francine Prose, Elizabeth von Arnim, and Shirley Hazzard. Travel literature forms the largest segment of both anthologies. Both collections preface each entry with bio-bibliographical information, but Cahill adds, as epilog "for the literary traveler," a fascinating contemporary walking tour of the places mentioned in each selection. She also includes a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. These complementary anthologies are fine additions to the travel collections of public libraries and academic collections supporting the travel literature genre.?Lonnie Weatherby, McGill Univ. Lib., Montreal
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1st edition (April 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0449910806
• ISBN-13: 978-0449910801
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #222,127 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful companion, May 17, 2000

By	saliero (NSW Australia) - See all my reviews

I love Italy and I love this book. It is arranged in regional sections, but that is not entirely relevant because the pieces range over time and subject. For example, in the section on The Veneto there is an excerpt from Marcella Hazan's 'Classic Italian Cookbook' (incidentally, one of the very finest cookbooks - a lovely literary work, and the recipes work too!) - on Italian Cooking: where does it come from? The Italian art of eating, restaurants The bacaro experience, gelati. Simply scrumptious.

The other contributors are the very best of literature: Edith Wharton, Francine Prose, Maty Shelley, Jan Morris, Muriel Spark (one of my favourite evocations and lived experiences: Venice in Fall and Winter), Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Elizabeth von Arnim, Francesca Alexander, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, Mary McCarthy, Kate Simon, Iris Origo, Lisa St Aubin de teran, Patricia Hampl, Florence Nightingale, Margaret Fuller, Eleanor Clark, Elizabeth Bowen, Elizabeth Spencer, Rose Macaulay, Shirley Hazzard, Ann Cornelisen, Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, Mary Taylor Simeti.

Each contribution is preceded by some brief contextual information on the author's piece. It is not 'biographical' in the sense of being a recitation of dates and places and events, more a little about the author's motivations or expressed thoughts about Italy or the subject at hand. After the excerpt is a guide for the traveller - a little more about the places, people or events mentioned in the passage.

This is the sort of book that inspires a lust for travel, or becomes a treasured travel companion. It is one of the most 'lovingly' edited books I have ever read.

Many anthologies contain an imbalance of male to female writers, and more men are travel writers, so this volume is particularly delightful. The editor elaborates on aspects of places that are particularly concerned with the cultural history of women. One of the reasons to produce a book using women writers is expressed by Susan Cahill (editor): " The women writers who love Italy take a different tone from what we hear in the travel notebooks of Dickens, Hawthorne or henry james. The women's narratives come across with a down-to-earth concreteness. They're irreverent, critical and anecdotal but never brittle, mean-spirited or smug at the Italians' expense....No narrator observes safely from a cool, aesthetic all-knowing distance. Rather, their affection for the place and people moves the current of the prose."

I love this book. Maybe you will too.

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars revealing, enchanting, complex, seductive, April 17, 1998

By A Customer

Crossing the dark waters from Venice on route to the Lido, I watched a woman so intent upon her reading that she seemed oblivious to the haunting beauty visible in all directions. As we slowed in our approach to the landing area, I asked her what she was reading. It was Desiring Italy, she said, given to her by her mother in anticipation of this trip. I recorded it in my journal and it was the first book that I bought upon arriving home. Written by a group of women writers, it is a joyous celebration of all things Italian. It evokes cultural traditions, artistic impressions and history and lyrically describes the glories of the places that you visit. How fortunate the traveler who has this book as a traveling companion. Just as Venice's twisting alleyways and canals create a desire for roving, so does this anthology lure you to a restlessness and passion for "la dolce vita". The autobiographical slant resonates with how Italy has imprinted itself in the hearts and souls of the women who arite of it in this book.

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An inspiring travelling companion, December 5, 1998

By A Customer

"Desiring Italy" became my inseparable travelling companion across Italy, after I found it by chance at a Roman bookstore. Not only it suggests special places to visit that are not always listed in traditional guides, it also makes them alive through their portrayal by literary masters (all women) that add their elegance, their sensitivity, their intelligence to that of the readers'. An added bonus was that I got to make their literary works real in my mind by following the steps of the characters in these magnificent settings (as Dorothea in "Middlemarch", for example).