Synopses & Reviews
When Fernando spots her in a Venice café and knows immediately that she is the One, Marlena de Blasi is caught off guard. A divorced American woman traveling through Italy, she thought she was satisfied with her life. Yet within a few months, she quits her job as a chef, sells her house, kisses her two grown kids good-bye, and moves to Venice. Once there, she finds herself sitting in sugar-scented pasticcerié, strolling through sixteenth-century palazzi, renovating an apartment overlooking the seductive Adriatic Sea, and preparing to wed a virtual stranger in an ancient stone church.
As this transplanted American learns the hard way about the peculiarities of Venetian culture, we are treated to an honest, often comic view of how two middle-aged people, both set in their ways but also set on being together, build a life. A Thousand Days in Venice is filled with the foods and flavors of Italy and peppered with recipes and culinary observations. But the main course here is about a woman who falls in love with both a man and a city, and finally finds the home she didn't know she was missing. It's a deliciously satisfying meal.
Review
"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...and picturesque scenes of the vendors..." Publishers Weekly
Review
Chef and author Marlena de Blasi assembles a heady mix of ingredients to make A Thousand Days in Venice an irresistible grown-up love story. USA Today
Review
"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." Olga B. Wise, Library Journal
Review
"If you've ever questioned the chance of a divorced woman on vacation finding a new love, read this. The author catches the eye of a handsome stranger in a Venetian café and romance ensues. A deliciously true story that spares none of the difficulties of starting a new life in a new culture with someone you barely know, but it skips none of the beauty or joy either." Babette Heistand, R.J. Julia's, Madison, CT
Synopsis
Fernando first sees Marlena across the Piazza San Marco and falls in love from afar. When he sees her again in a Venice café a year later, he knows it is fate. He knows little English; she, a divorced American chef traveling through Italy, speaks only food-based Italian. Marlena thought she was done with romantic love, incapable of intimacy. Yet within months of their first meeting, she has quit her job, sold her house in St. Louis, kissed her two grown sons good-bye, and moved to Venice to marry "the stranger," as she calls Fernando.
This deliciously satisfying memoir is filled with the foods and flavors of Italy and peppered with culinary observations and recipes. But the main course here is an enchanting true story about a woman who falls in love with both a man and a city, and finally finds the home she didn't even know she was missing.
About the Author
Marlena de Blasi has been a chef, a journalist, a food and wine consultant, and a restaurant critic and is the author of two cookbooks, REGIONAL FOODS OF NORTHERN ITALY and REGIONAL FOODS OF SOUTHERN ITALY. She and her husband, Fernando, now direct gastronomic tours through Tuscany and Umbria.