I recently finished reading John Berendt's The City of Falling Angels. He made a big splash with his first book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. In Midnight... he tells of his visits to Savannah, Georgia and his discovery of the people, culture, and current events. His second book follows the same format but is about Venice, Italy. He arrives in Italy three days after a fire reduced the historic opera house to a shell and quickly dives under the skin of the city to describe the intrigues and suspicions behind the cause of the fire and Venetian Society. I picked up the book at O'Hara Airport on a layover on my way to spend Thanksgiving with family. It caught my eye because I absolutely loved Berendt's first book. The movie was good but the book was much better. And the first few pages of the second book is filled with excerpts of book reviews proclaiming it better than the first.
My favorite review is by The Miami Herald: "As refreshing as a chilly Bellini on a humid afternoon, The City of Falling Angels captures Venice's inhabitants and intrigues through a series of sharp, well-defined sketches and explores the amusing stink of its bureaucratic corruptions, high society skirmishes and daring artistic feats. Berendt immerses us deeply in the city's culture and we emerge sputtering and thrilled."
The City of Falling Angels does all of that and more and I highly recommend it. Berendt is a master story teller. He lets the events and people speak for themselves without unneccesary embellishment while painting a beautiful picture of the city, not as a still-life, but describes the life, breath, and sounds of the town the full-time inhabitants know; tourists play no part.
I cannot agree, however, that it's better than his first book. It lacks the surprise and wonderment of Midnight... In the first book Berendt is a young author living in Manhattan who goes to Savannah almost by chance as something different to do on a weekend. He's so surprised by the cast of eccentric characters and situations he finds that he keeps going back, finding Manhattan boring by comparision. In the second book you expect him to find a colorful array of personalities to populate his play and he does; although they're not quite as off-the-charts eccentric as the folks in that sleepy southern city of Savannah. It's not Berendt's or Venice's fault. There are plenty of stories to tell about Venice. It's just that power hungry social climbers, royal descendents, glitterati and a fire can't compete with a murder, a Voodoo priestess, and a Drag Queen.
My favorite review is by The Miami Herald: "As refreshing as a chilly Bellini on a humid afternoon, The City of Falling Angels captures Venice's inhabitants and intrigues through a series of sharp, well-defined sketches and explores the amusing stink of its bureaucratic corruptions, high society skirmishes and daring artistic feats. Berendt immerses us deeply in the city's culture and we emerge sputtering and thrilled."
The City of Falling Angels does all of that and more and I highly recommend it. Berendt is a master story teller. He lets the events and people speak for themselves without unneccesary embellishment while painting a beautiful picture of the city, not as a still-life, but describes the life, breath, and sounds of the town the full-time inhabitants know; tourists play no part.
I cannot agree, however, that it's better than his first book. It lacks the surprise and wonderment of Midnight... In the first book Berendt is a young author living in Manhattan who goes to Savannah almost by chance as something different to do on a weekend. He's so surprised by the cast of eccentric characters and situations he finds that he keeps going back, finding Manhattan boring by comparision. In the second book you expect him to find a colorful array of personalities to populate his play and he does; although they're not quite as off-the-charts eccentric as the folks in that sleepy southern city of Savannah. It's not Berendt's or Venice's fault. There are plenty of stories to tell about Venice. It's just that power hungry social climbers, royal descendents, glitterati and a fire can't compete with a murder, a Voodoo priestess, and a Drag Queen.
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