A Thousand Days in Venice

April 1, 2002
On a visit to Venice, de Blasi meets a local bank manager who falls in love with her at first sight. After "the stranger" (as she coyly calls him throughout the book) pursues her back to her home in St. Louis, Mo., she agrees to return to Italy and marry him, leaving behind her grown children and her job as chef and partner in a cafe. Although the banker, Fernando, lives in a bunkerlike postwar condominium on the Lido rather than the Venetian palazzo of her dreams, and some of his European ideas about women clash with her American temperament, the relationship works. She survives his criticism of her housekeeping and his displeasure at her insistence on remaining a serious cook (in modern Italy "No one bakes bread or dolci or makes pasta at home," he tells her), and they marry. Then one day Fernando surprises her by announcing that he is quitting his job at the bank where he has worked for 26 years. They leave Venice, he espouses her interest in food and they now direct gastronomic tours of Tuscany and Umbria. De Blasi's breathless descriptions of her improbable love affair can be cloying, but she makes up for these excesses with her enchanting accounts of Venice, especially of the markets at the Rialto. She conjures up vivid images of produce "so sumptuously laid as to be awaiting Caravaggio" and picturesque scenes of the vendors, such as the egg lady who keeps her hens under her table, collects the eggs as soon as they are laid and wraps each one in newspaper, "twisting both ends so that the confection looks like a rustic prize for a child's party." In a final section entitled "Food for a Stranger," de Blasi (Regional Foods of Northern Italy
) includes recipes for a few of the dishes with which she charmed the stranger.

April 1, 2002
Venice is almost synonymous with romance, and in this charming account de Blasi spares no detail in telling us how she fell under its spell. A journalist, restaurant critic, and food consultant, de Blasi left her home, her grown children, and her job as a chef in St. Louis to marry Fernando, a Venetian she barely knew. In defiance of the cynics who think true love in middle age is crazy, her marriage flourished, as these two strangers made a life together. Food comforted the newlyweds when their conflicting cultures almost divided them, and in the end marital harmony reigns. Is this book a romance, a food guide, or an exhortation for us to come to Venice and experience the magic? Ultimately, it is all three, and there is even an appendix that includes recipes for dishes described in the text. Recommended for larger travel, biography, or cooking collections. Olga B. Wise, Compaq Computer Corp., Austin, TX

Copyright 2002 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2002
A mature American woman traveling in Italy finds herself delicately but persistently pursued by a mysterious Venetian. Despite her initial reluctance, she eventually succumbs to his determination and agrees to meet him. When he follows her home to St. Louis, she takes him seriously, and she agrees to marry him. Thus chef and writer Marlena de Blasi recounts her fantasy-like romance. Returning to Venice for the marriage, she takes a leap of faith, dissolving her Missouri apartment and business. She carefully notes and lovingly describes all the Venetian neighborhoods and the many islands of the Venetian lagoon that figure in her maturing affair. Along the way she introduces a host of characters, such as the chain-smoking Italian consul who cautions her about marrying an Italian man. The author also reveals something of her first disastrous marriage and her now grown children. A handful of elegant, inspiring recipes for foods that have figured in the text round out the book. Venice-lovers will connect with the passions depicted in this memoir.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)