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“The title of this book is Palladian Days, Finding a new life in a venetian country house. That title totally fooled me. In my mind I saw a couple in the productive years of their life, falling in love with this house or Italy, moving there and restoring it and all the problems and fun it entailed. Starting perhaps new careers and you name it. Well, that is not at all the story!
Luthién Arnatuilë wrote this review Saturday, August 15 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
A what I would call, privileged US couple nearing retirement age, buys this house on a whim and spends at the most 4 months a year in it, divided up as two months in spring and two in autumn. The husband only a couple of weeks a year. I do not call that finding a new life. They might feel part of the community but facts remain that if you only come to a house for extended holidays, you will never be part of "us" and you can never describe things the way they truly are or give a proper picture. You are the lord and lady of the manor, above the rest. Yes, they socialize with some couples in town but...
They complain about their bank account being strained but never ever does it happen that they can not buy the house or do the extensive repairs the house needs like an old broken car. New problems pop up all the time and they can always pay. When I pick up a book like this I expect "real life". This isn't really real somehow. They are like the rich Venetian family Cornaro, that built the villa. Venetian palace owners went to the countryside in the summer to escape the hot city, to oversee planting and harvesting and that is what the Gables do, they oversee repairs in spring and autumn.
So, if you want to read a book on how one hires this and this person to repair this and this damage, how you have a chief designer help you pick out clothes, getting private tours at museums, glass factories, then this is the book for you. Us ordinary mortals could never get in at the places they enter. It's like peeking in on the rich and famous and for that I would not recommend the book. Yes, it has funny comments, it has cute stories about neighbours and observations about the town's people but it all comes at uneven spaces in the book. And the Italy she tells you about is basically gone. She touches some of the major changes in the very last chapter but not enough. ”
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