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Loading... Marcus of Umbria: What an Italian Dog Taught an American Girl about Loveby Justine van der Leun
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Shamefully, I've had to quit trying to read this book as I've had it for about four months and can't seem to break 100 pages. I just can't stand our heroine! The book has a chick lit feel to it -- which might work for some but is a turn off for me. The 'struggles' of Americans living in bucolic foreign lands aggravate rather than entrance me, and this book was no exception. ( ) An article in Rachel Ray’s magazine led me to this book. It’s a twist on a traditional love story, and pulled me right in from the first pages when Marcus has a chicken between her (yes, her) drooling jaws and Justine is attempting to persuade her to set it free while not attracting the attention of the farmer to whose flock it has been filched. The author takes a short term job as an escape from a conventional job that she is liking less and less, and goes to live with her boyfriend and his family in an off-the-beaten path village in Italy. What is great about this book is that it’s not the “Under the Tuscan Sun” Italy, it’s real country life Italy, as seen from the inside. Among the gifts that this time bestowed upon her is a new relationship to the food she eats, as she watches the lambs, pigs, and pigeon’s go from farm to table, to become the family’s dinners. There is also a lesson here to be more …specific about what you wish for. :) no reviews | add a review
Tired of laboring in city cubicles, the author sublets her studio apartment, leaves her magazine job, and moves to Collelungo, Italy, population: 200. There, in the ancient city center of a historic Umbrian village, she sets up house with the handsome local gardener she met on vacation only weeks earlier. This impulsive decision launches an eye-opening series of misadventures when village life and romance turn out to be radically different from what she had imagined. Love lost with the gardener is found instead with Marcus, an abandoned English pointer that she rescues. With Marcus by her side, Justine discovers the bliss and hardship of living in the countryside: herding sheep, tending to wild horses, picking olives with her adopted Italian family, and trying her best to learn the regional dialect. Not quite up to wild boar hunting, no good at gathering mushrooms, and no mamma when it comes to making pasta, she never quite fits in with the locals who, despite their differences, take her in as one of their own. The result is a rich, comic, and unconventional portrait about learning to live and love in the most unexpected ways. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)945.651History and Geography Europe Italy and region Marches, Umbria, Lazio; Vatican CityLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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