A Thousand Days in Venice

In November 1993 the author arrived in Venice with two friends in tow. As they lunched at a small local place, she noticed a table of four men seated nearby. After all the other patrons had left and she and her friends were alone in the restaurant, the waiter approached and said there was a telephone call for her. “Not possible,” she answered. They had only just arrived that morning and had not yet notified their friends where they were, surely they hadn’t told anyone where they were going for lunch! But the waiter insisted and she went to the phone, to hear a “deep, deliberate, Italian voice I’d never heard before” ask – Is it possible for you to meet me tomorrow at the same time? It’s very important for me.

She resisted show more for several days, but he kept finding her. And when she returned to St Louis, there he was two days later - come across the ocean to insist she return with him to Venice. He was “tired of waiting” for his life to begin, for joy and love to come to him.

This is a delicious memoir of a love that surprised these two middle-aged people – a Venetian banker and an American journalist (and chef). I am smiling thinking about it. I kept reading passages aloud to anyone who would listen (and even a few who didn’t want to listen). De Blasi is not only in love with Fernando (“the stranger”), she is in love with Venice. No, she is in love with life, and she imbues her writing with that love. Is it all smooth sailing? Of course not. He lives, and prefers, a Spartan life – simple, small meals, a functional but uninspired and colorless apartment. She is vibrant, wearing “too-red” lipstick, and wanting to surround herself in rich fabrics and deep colors. And, she is a chef – she loves to cook large elaborate meals, to nurture people. Oh, and she isn’t fluent in Italian, much less the Venetian dialect, and he doesn’t speak English. And yet … She held tight to her friend’s advice: “Take it in your hands and hold tight to this love. If it comes, it comes only once.”

Read this. And enjoy life! show less

This was part of a box of books I was given by my neighbour, and as I'd previously read A Thousand Days in Tuscany, I was interested to read how de Blasi's story began. When I first picked up A Thousand Days in Tuscany it was billed as 'romantic' but was not at all romantic (beyond the romance of living in Tuscany); it was far more about her and her husband's work on their land and home and I found it more interesting than I expected. So when I saw this one touted as romantic as well, I took it with a grain of salt.

Turns out this one is all about the romance. How she met her husband on a trip to Venice and had sold everything back home and married him within the year. This might seem implausible to a lot of readers, but as I met MT, show more sold everything and moved to AU within 10 months, I'm not one of those people. Our beginnings, however, weren't nearly as romantic; I suspect the setting had a lot to do with that. Exotic (for me, anyway), but definitely not Venice-Italy-romantic. (This might sound like a wistful complaint; it's not - I do not have a romantic bone in my body.)

So, generally, I did not enjoy this one as much. I mean, I enjoyed the Venice bits, of course, but reading about her romance and her struggles to fit in to an entirely new culture, while getting to know her new husband were, even though they felt very realistic, not really my cuppa.

Reading this did leave me with a very strong hankering for pasta though. Three guesses what we had for dinner. ;) show less

To continue my travel memoir kick. . . this was a pleasing memoir with a lovely literary style of writing and wonderful descriptions of food and cooking. Good for foodies. The author is an American chef and writer who while staying in Venice meets a "blueberry eyed" Venetian man who looks like Peter Sellers and who falls in love with her at first sight. She falls in love with him too, and moves to live in Venice with him, in a decidedly unromantic apartment that she redecorates & then they remodel together. This book hit most of my happy notes: lush Italian cooking & drink descriptions (and American actually), beautiful descriptions of foreign places and people, with some history thrown in (but not a huge amount), a romantic story but show more also realistic one about adjusting to married life with a near stranger, and descriptions of house and apartment remodeling done by a woman with style and a real sense of what the Germans call "gemütlich" (comfortable, cozy, homy).I have her next book, "A Thousand Days in Tuscany", on hold now at the library. Yay. show less

I'd picked this up not expecting too much if the first chapters didn't capture my attention. I was greatly surprised that the writing was so good, I kept up reading till the end. A memoir of a long divorced woman, with now grown adult children, who meets a man in Venice during a working visit. They fall in love, she lets herself fall in love with the city and so the book moves on from there. Touted as a romance, it definitely has an emphasis on the romantic elements of love and Venetian impressions that everyone wants to claim as their own. De Blasi is a gourmet food writer so everything has great detail, not just the food and its presentation.
Most men wouldn't go for this book, but I really enjoyed the display of writing talent and show more ability to reflect on ones own life so well. Women will love this, and I hope they would pick it up. If you have never been to Venice, this will not interest you. If you have, then you'll look forward to the time you'll be surprised by de Balsi's way with words. Born Catholic and married in one of the many Venetian Roman Catholic Churches, she makes it seem only natural to so. Her husband was educated by the Jesuits and isn't proud of that, but what are you going to do? Only two printing errors: Taught for taut, and Ascension mistaken for Assumption. Still worth the time comparing your own memories of that great place with those of de Balsi's. show less

Move aside Eat,Pray,Love ... Marlena de Blassi has given us a truly reflective look at a woman who is unafraid to trust her soul to whatever the Fates may bring. Be it love in the form of a skinny Venetian banker who fell in love with her profile when she first came to Venice, or be it leaving her St Louise home and moving to Venice to be with this stranger, or be it embracing her new home and having that gently elegant lady embrace her.

On the surface, the story is a about a woman who falls in love and moves to Venice to get married. And if you were to skim quickly through this book, you would lose the chance to learn. For yes, there are lessons to learn through our heroine, Marlena's journey to love. She loves the man and in that love, show more she also trusts her heart, and she opens herself without reserve to experiences that present themselves to her, and truly adapting to the Venetian culture. Where her fiance retreats into his mental man-cave and looks around with "dead-bird eyes", she has the patience and self-confidence to let him weed out his angst on his own, trusting that he will open up to her when he is ready.

Her journey is lovely as it is inspirational as it is sometimes humorous. What it is, most of all, though, is hopeful. show less

"Venice is all our fantasies. Water, light, color, perfume, escape, disguise, license are gold spun and stitched into the skirts she trails across her stones by day and spreads over her lagoon in the never-quite-blackness of her nights."

A short book of love, travel, food, and chance encounters.

de Blasi has traveled to Venice many times, and on one of her trips, the day she is scheduled to leave, she meets Fernando, a Venetian who correctly identifies her as a woman he saw during her previous trip (he was too shy to introduce himself then). Not wanting the moment to pass again Fernando asks her to dinner and proclaims his strong connection to her. Fast forward just a few months and de Blasi has sold her home in St. Louis, moved to show more Venice, and she and Fernando are engaged (according to my Google search they're stil married).

This is the type of book to read if you want a diversion and like stories about food, architecture, love, and people who have made dramatic changes in their lives. This is a book with a lot of passion (not anything R-rated, but zest for life and living it to the fullest).

The book gets 3 stars because the writing itself wavers between zest and filler. show less

A solid 3 1/2 stars. This grown up real life romance between a chef and her Venetian stranger is romantic, yet not mushy. The writing is good, the way Marlena De Blasi gets to know Venice daily, the people at the market, how things works every day versus when you are there as a tourist, is fascinating in its own right.

The relationship and growing up that both of them do while loving each other deeply is a joy to read. One thing that I loved is how De Blasi wrote that she had fallen in love before but had never really loved before she met him.

It's a lovely read that mixed Venice, food and romance. A winning combination as far as I'm concerned.