Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
The man who made Savannah really famous visits fabled Venice, and though his starting point is the 1996 fire that consumed the Fenice opera house, his narrative concerns the crazed painters, partying Americans, glassblowers, hustlers, and others who ply the city's streets-er, canals. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publishers Weekly Review
It's taken Berendt 10 years follow up his long-running bestseller, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. In lieu of Savannah, he offers us Venice, another port city full of eccentric citizens and with a long, colorful history. Like the first book, this one has a trial at the its center: Berendt moves to Venice in 1997, just three days after the city's famed Fenice opera house burns down during a restoration. The Venetian chattering classes, among whom Berendt finds a home, want to know whether it was an accident or arson. Initially, Berendt investigates, but is soon distracted by the city's charming denizens. Early on, he's warned, "Everyone in Venice is acting," which sets the stage for fascinating portraits: a master glassblower creating an homage to the fire in vases, an outspoken surrealist painter, a tenacious prosecutor and others. As the infamous Italian bureaucracy drags out the investigation, Berendt spends more time schmoozing with the expatriate community in long discussions about its role in preserving local art, culture and architecture. By the time the Fenice is rebuilt and reopens, Berendt has delivered an intriguing mosaic of modern life in Venice, which makes for first-rate travel writing, albeit one that lacks a compelling core story to keep one reading into the night. Agent, Suzanne Gluck. (On sale Sept. 27) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
The author's phenomenally best-selling Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil 0 (1994), which, for a record-breaking four years, remained on the New York Times 0 best-seller list, drew tourists in droves to the lovely city of Savannah, Georgia. Will his thoroughly engaging new book do the same for the tourist trade to Venice, Italy? In 1996, Berendt planned an extended, off-season stay in Venice. Just three days prior to his arrival, Venice's world-famous opera house burned to the ground. He uses the official investigation into the disaster and the construction of a new opera house as a paradigm of civic and social life in this enigmatic city whose importance to the world -(other than as a tourist destination) has long vanished, and he uses the personal stories of the wide variety of individuals with whom he became acquainted during the course of his stay not only to enrich but also to personalize his account. This is journalism at its most accomplished; it is creative nonfiction as enveloping and heart embracing as good fiction. --Brad Hooper Copyright 2005 Booklist
Kirkus Book Review
An intriguing tour of mysterious Venice and its most fascinating residents, centered around a 1996 fire that destroyed the city's historic opera house. Venice may be sinking, but in Berendt's capable hands, the city has never seemed more colorful, perplexing and alluring. The story focuses on the destruction by fire in 1996 of the famed Fenice Opera House, where Verdi first unveiled Rigoletto and La Traviata. Berendt, best known for 1995's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, decides to take an apartment to record the drama that ensues. What follows is part police drama, part cultural tour, with many pauses for comic relief along the way. While visiting some of Venice's ornate palazzos and their aristrocratic inhabitants, we encounter characters like the chameleon-like Mario Moro, whose wardrobe includes a different official uniform for every day of the week, and Massimo Donadon, "The Rat King of Treviso." Eventually, two electricians are charged with torching the Fenice, but as is customary in Venice, the whole truth seems to lie hidden in the city's dimly lit alleyways and winding canals. Berendt also finds intrigue in unexpected quarters. We follow a vicious boardroom feud that ignites within Save Venice, an international fundraising group formed to help restore the city's old buildings and artworks. We also encounter Philip and Jane Rylands, caretakers of Ezra Pound's aged companion of 50 years, Olga Rudge, who are later accused of exploiting the woman's senility in a bid for Pound's Venice cottage and private papers. With the exception of the occasional wrong turn (Berendt lingers far too long over the apparent suicide of a local gay artist, for example), this is an engaging journey in which the author navigates Venice's shadowy politics, its tangled bureaucracy and its elegant high-society nightlife with a discerning, sanguine touch. Berendt does great justice to an exalted city that has rightly fascinated the likes of Henry James, Robert Browning and many filmmakers throughout the world. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.