Desiring Italy: Women Writers Celebrate the Passions of a Country and Culture by Susan Cahill

Desiring Italy: Women Writers Celebrate the Passions of a Country and Culture Reviews

• 
  Teresa

  (Written August, 2009) I read the Rome and Naples sections on the plane on the way to Italy and enjoyed them. Wharton's "Roman Fever" was, of course, excellent. The essays by Eleanor Clark on Rome's fountains and by Elizabeth Bowen on its churches and piazzas I used as a sort of guide book once we started exploring. I would have missed out on some wonderful things if I hadn't read these essays, and certain sections of each piece rang in my head as I followed in the authors' footsteps. I went back to the beginning of the book on the return flight and enjoyed the sections on Venice, but I'm putting the book aside for now -- maybe until the next time I go to Italy!
  
  (Added October, 2010) I ended up finishing this book before I made it back to Italy. While it would've been lovely to see the places written about, the writing here is still enriching and illuminating without the travel. I especially liked the excerpts from two memoirs, one by Ann Cornelisen about her involvement in social projects in Torregreca and another by Mary Taylor Simeti about her life in Sicily.
  
  In an excerpt from Barbara Grizzuiti Harrison's "Palermo," I was excited to see a mention of my paternal grandfather's hometown, Monreale (which he left when he was 8 years old). It is 5 miles southeast of Palermo, and apparently its cathedral and cloisters are a "repository of the world's most magnificent mosaic art," according to the book's editor.
• 
  Liz

  A compilation of essays, memoirs, and excerpts from novels. I found some to be a bit dry, but most of them were quite lovely.
• 
  Danie Cutter

  A great selection of stories, papers, anything written in fact. I started reading this before my month in Italy and was rather focussed on the "tourist notes", something completely changed as upon my return I found myself far more engrossed by the actual excerpts than the extras. Maybe this is because the majority of writings despite some being over 100 years old are so easily recognisable in today's Italy.
  
  I was slightly disappointed with the focus on Northern Italy as my heart so belongs to the South, but in this may appeal to others as the South is still rarely travelled unless you have an abundance of time. On the plus side there were areas outside of the major cities touched on in the North which offers a differing view outside the usual destinations.
• 
  Sally Edsall

  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.
• 
  Sara

  3.5 stars actually since some of these essays were more rewarding than others. This would be a good book to take to Italy, especially for a month or more, and you can buy it for $5 for Kindle.
  Cahill has unearthed some really interesting writers here - a number are quite familiar, for instance Edith Wharton, George Eliot, Mary Shelley, Muriel Spark, Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Bowen, Elizabeth Spencer (and of course Marcella Hazan on Italian food!). It's nice to have these excerpts along with some guidebook-type suggestions for where to go in various places.
  The 19th century excerpts are of varying interest.
  But I made several real discoveries here! Iris Origo's diaries, especially her war diary from 1943-44, and Margaret Fuller's dispatches to the New York Herald Tribune from 1846-1850, when the Italian struggle for independence was just beginning. Who knew she was there? Wow.
  I enjoyed reading Patricia Hampl on Assisi, having been there. And Rose Macaulay and Shirley Hazard made me want to go to Naples even though I never was interested before...hm... Mary Taylor Simeti was good on Sicily in winter.
  But Ann Cornelisen - oh my! worked in Lucania for Save the Children, changing careers from archaeology to living people, and her writing, from her Torregreca: Life, Death, Miracles, is marvelous.
  My only real disappointment was Barbara Grizzuti Harrison's snippet on Sicily - way too many lists and rather clichéd perceptions.
  But I can't not like a book that includes Elizabeth Spencer's wonderful story "The White Azalea." Written for all women who long to throw the obligations away...or bury them, in this case!
  
• 
  Rebecca

  Nice collection of essays and fiction. Good introduction to Italy. (Read sometime in the early 21st century, before trip to Italy.)
• 
  Heather

  Desiring Italy is a collection of excerpts by women writers over the last century or so. It is introduced as a collection of stories by women writers who loved Italy, whether they called it home or not.
  
  Some of the pieces are beautiful. Some are a little dry, or atleast I found them so. The only thing I really didn’t like about this book was that several of the pieces are not about Italy so much as simply set in Italy.
  
  Still, the writing was wonderful and there were several pieces by well known writers, balanced by a lot of work by people at least I had never heard of…
  
  Verdict: B
• 
  k8beeZ

  If you liked the Italy chapters of
  Eat, Pray, Love...then you gotta check this out!
• 
  Carol Holder

  This collection has a lot of good stuff in it. It led me to read more by each author.