With the breathless anticipation that seduced her readers to fall in love with Venice and then Tuscany, Marlena de Blasi now takes us on a new journey as she moves with her husband, Fernando, to Orvieto, a large and ancient city in Italy's Umbria. Having neither an edge to a sea nor a face to a foreign land, it's a region less trampled by travelers and, in turn, less accepting of strangers. So de Blasi sets out to establish her niche in this new place and to win over her new neighbors by doing what she does best, cooking her way into their hearts. (Her recipes are included.) Rich with history and a vivid sense of place, her memoir is by turns romantic and sensual, joyous and celebratory, as she searches for the right balance in this city on the hill, as well as the right home--which turns out to be the former ballroom of a dilapidated sixteenth-century palazzo. De Blasi meets and makes friends with an array of colorful, memorable characters, including cooks and counts and shepherds and a lone violinist, and their stories, too, become a part of the tapestry of life that she weaves for herself in Orvieto. With a voice full of wonder, she brings to life these engagingly quirky people and the aloof, almost daunting society that exists in Umbria. Not since Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence has a writer so happily succeeded in capturing the essence of a singular place and in creating a feast for readers of all stripes.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Minority Opinion:
I bought this book last month (October 2008), while on my 5th visit to Orvieto. I was hoping for an insightful portrait of Orvieto, a place for which I have enormous regard. Unfortunately, this book is primarily about Ms. De Blasi, not about Orvieto. I find her writing style to be self-consciously florid, almost equivalent to "reading" a Thomas Kinkade painting. I also found somewhat disconcerting her assumption that the reader (I!) should know of her past, i.e., that I should have read her previous books.... more info
Mediocre writing, but a solid story about Umbria nontheless:
When I travel, I enjoy reading novels about the place I'm going to - it adds an extra dimension to all of the new sights and cities. To this end The Lady in the Palazzo was a good book to read about Umbria, with lots of fun anecdotes about the towns and culture of the region. However the writing is run-of-the-mill and at times awkward. For example, in the middle of the book two chapters are devoted to the back stories of the novel's supporting characters. While flashbacks like this can be an interesting... more info
The Lady in the Palazzo: At Home in Umbria:
A fabulously well written story of their continuing adventures of living in Italy. Her observations of the idiocyncracies of the villages of Tuscany and Umbria are close to the mark and full of humor and "stranger in a strange land" frustration and successes.It is as lovely as her first book about Venice and meeting Fernando, and the recipes are the next thing I will want to try. Marlena gets better and better.
disappointed:
I read 1000 Days in Tuscany and found it lovely. This, I thought, was a bore. It felt as though she was just fulfilling the obligation of a trilogy and had to come up with something. Yes, her writing is gorgeous, but she writes of the mundane..no matter it is Umbria.
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